Is not Christianity really about the total unreserved break-out through the shock of the external encounter? Christianity posits the radical idea that one cannot surpass the monster "other" that gazes at you with the eye of God himself. It is a logic that must withstand the weight and burden of God's gaze (within which one's subjectivity is constituted) on you through the Neighbor. Thus, to love your neighbor is to love God. But here the notion of Love itself is called into question, because if Christianity surpasses the Jewish Law (without totally sublating it) in Love (via Christ etc.) then, at bottom, one secretly overcodes and tames the "otherness" of God, the Neighbor and even the abyss of oneself (and the Law etc.) such that true encounter of otherness is no longer even necessary. And this returns us back to God's gaze that determines us, because with Love as the center mediating point of all things, then the Gaze can only now appear to one as unthreatening to one's own being. So, and here is the paradox--with Love the neighbor disappears along with God.
To keep love we must therefore have a version of love that is always linked to the law such that the surpassing of the latter via love is only possible once love vanishes from the world forever.
The neighbor only is if love is checked by the law--the law as the external encounter beyond the reach of even love itself.
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