This is where I think Agamben misreads Badiou (because Agamben’s book is explicitly in polemic with Badiou) precisely concerning universality. What Agamben tries to prove is that Paul’s position is not universality but even double division—you cut a line, a division between those who are in and those who are out within every community. But I would say that precisely this is the Paulinian-Hegelian notion of universality, not universality as a positive encompassing feature.
Universality is a line that cuts universally and this is, how shall I put it, absolutely unique in Christianity and this is what we are losing with these gnostic wisdoms and even with political correctness, tolerance, and so on, because the notion of truth there is not that of a fighting truth but that of differences, space open for everything. This notion of truth as painful, truth means you cut a line of difference . . . which is why for me, as I claim, you know that mysterious statement of Christ’s
“I came here not to bring peace but a sword”— I don’t think this should be read as “kill the bad guys.” It is a militant work of love.
The key point for me is that Hegelian statement which I make all the time, which is that what dies on the cross is not a finite representative of God, but the God beyond himself. So that “Holy Spirit” means precisely, we are on our own, in a way. This terrible opening, this freedom, which, and here I am quite dogmatic: what we really mean by freedom was opened only through Judeo-Christian space. Freedom in this radical sense is … what Lacan would have called desire of the Other qua Other.
Without the abyss of the other, without perceiving the other in an abyss, without not knowing what the other wants, you are not free.