Theologians endlessly theorized enemy-love while evading who exactly the enemy is

Evidence

It is notable that the Gebot der Feindesliebe, though foundational (but of what?) and widely known, did not occasion a larger number of scholarly studies. … If one turns to the Middle Ages, however, what becomes striking is never the absence of the commandment. To mention but a few major examples, “Love your enemies” is discussed at length by Augustine in De doctrina Christiana and by Aquinas in the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles. It is “perhaps the most frequently cited Scriptural reference in Francis [of Assisi]‘s Opuscula” (Mastnak, Crusading Peace, 193). … What remains either implicit or simply unthought in this case is not that there are enemies and that they should be loved-even if this is something that might reveal itself impossible-but the meaning of the word “enemy.” It is as if the “concrete” question of who the enemy is cannot be addressed in properly theological (one might say, theoretical and abstract) discussions. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 877

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how abstract theory (theology) drifts away from concrete political referents — parallels critiques of liberal universalism elsewhere.
• SEED: Article angle: the history of a question theology refused — who is the enemy? — as a case study in how doctrine sublimates the political.