Theological reflection defines the enemy through the lover, not the enemy himself

Evidence

What is perhaps most striking about Aquinas’s recasting of the commandment to love the enemy and about the distinctions he makes is that it all says very little about the enemy. It is as if theological reflection had nothing to do with the enemy, nothing to do with thinking the enemy. Aside from uncertain hints regarding enmity as a contingent part of one’s nature, the distinctions Aquinas proposes are not located in the enemy “himself,” but in the love that is directed (if not necessarily expressed) toward the enemy. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 184

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures Anidjar’s claim that the enemy is a relational/structural position within Christian love’s logic rather than a determinate being — core to the book’s theoretical spine.