Goicoechea introduces the concept of reconciliation as one of Paul’s key concept that is worked out also in his own life with the other competing Christ factions of his day,

So Paul’s task is to love his enemies, Cephas and Apollos, and yet to contest them at the same time in the spirit of love.  Goicoechea, David. Agape and Personhood: with Kierkegaard, Mother, and Paul (A Logic of Reconciliation from the Shamans to Today) (Postmodern Ethics Book 2) (p. 197). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The idea of the transformative nature of your eyes being opened to the violence you are inflicting goes to the heart of Paul’s conversion experience,

Paul has discovered that Christ’s agape is wider than any irreconcilable differences and deeper than any insurmountable factions. When he experienced Stephen’s loving forgiveness and then saw that it was Christ’s loving forgiveness even for him, a stoner of Stephen, he experienced humankind’s highest affirmation with this new notion of reconciliation with its new logic, anthropology and theology that he is now beginning to work out to meet the challenges of the factions and differences that are so obvious in spite of God’s love. Goicoechea, David. Agape and Personhood: with Kierkegaard, Mother, and Paul (A Logic of Reconciliation from the Shamans to Today) (Postmodern Ethics Book 2) (p. 195). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This will be the lesson of Paul’s relation to the Corinthian church,

This letter teaches the way of alienation, hostility and reconciliation and the point is that God has forgiven us so we should forgive others. God’s love lets sinners be reconciled even though they still fight and even though they remain sinners while they are justified.  Goicoechea, David. Agape and Personhood: with Kierkegaard, Mother, and Paul (A Logic of Reconciliation from the Shamans to Today) (Postmodern Ethics Book 2) (pp. 190-191). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Even if there are insurmountable factions and irreconcilable differences Paul believes that there is at the same time a deeper reconciliation.

It is in this Letter to the Corinthians that Paul finally has his breakthrough to the actual concept and word of “reconciliation.”  As a Bible Concordance shows the concept is only treated in four Pauline Epistles and it is mentioned a bit in Second Maccabees.  In 2nd Maccabees, the Greek verb katallasso and the noun katallage refer to the restoration of God’s favor and the reconciliation between God and His people after a period of divine wrath.  2nd Maccabees emphasizes God’s initiative in laying aside His anger. The terms highlight a radical change from a state of divine judgment to one of peace and restored relationship.  In 2nd Maccabees, reconciliation is a unique blend of man’s faithfulness and God’s sovereign decision to end His judgment. While “man” does indeed act, the book portrays these actions not as a “transaction” that forces God’s hand, but as a catalyst for God to exercise His own mercy. In the absence of a functioning Temple (which was defiled by Antiochus), 2nd Maccabees presents the deaths of the martyrs as a form of sacrifice.  The martyrs aren’t paying a debt to “buy” God’s love; rather, their total obedience even unto death proves their loyalty to the Covenant, prompting God to “turn His face” back toward them.  Even though the martyrs die and the people pray, the text emphasizes that reconciliation only happens because of God’s character:  The author argues that God is only angry “for a little while” to discipline His people. Reconciliation is the natural end of His disciplinary process, not something He is reluctant to do.  The turning of “wrath into mercy” is described as an act of the “Lord’s mercy”. The humans provide the evidence of faith, but God is the one who chooses to accept it and “be reconciled.” 

The book opens with a letter to the Jews in Egypt, praying that God would “be reconciled” with them. This shows that reconciliation is sought through humble petition and a return to the Law, rather than just the ritual of animal sacrifice.  We see something similar in the story of Jonah and the penitential psalms. 

While Judas Maccabeus did offer a sin offering for the fallen soldiers, the “heart” of reconciliation in 2nd Maccabees is the moral and spiritual restoration of the nation through suffering and prayer. The human “initiative” is repentance and faithfulness, which then allows God to fulfill His desire to be at peace with His servants.  The Book of 4th Maccabees takes this idea even further by calling the martyrs’ blood a “purification” for the land.  While katallasso in other contexts can mean to exchange or change (often used for exchanging money), in 2 Maccabees and similar biblical contexts, it refers specifically to bringing hostile parties into harmony.

Paul says “It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation (2 Cor 5:16-21).”  It’s not explicitly developed or used in any other Biblical texts. The verb in Greek is katallaso and the noun is katallage and they are translated into Latin as reconciliare and reconciliatio.  Goicoechea, David. Agape and Personhood: with Kierkegaard, Mother, and Paul (A Logic of Reconciliation from the Shamans to Today) (Postmodern Ethics Book 2) (p. 188). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

So, Paul’s message of reconciliation will be lived out with his confrontations with the super apostles, but also Cephas, Apollos, but Paul will find a way to work with the Jerusalem church and get them to see his argument against circumcision and contribute to the poor in Jerusalem through collection.  In effect, there is a major contradiction in the usual interpretation of Paul.  In Romans, on the one hand, Ehrman has the fine payment transaction of Jesus’ death, but on the other the entity Sin corrupting people.  If Sin was brainwashing and inciting people, why would God think people guilty?

This gives us a good foundation to look at Jesus’ innovative ethics.  Ehrman says:

Some of Jesus’s ethical principles would have resonated with pagans around the Roman world. Nearly everyone everywhere agreed it was wrong to murder, steal someone else’s spouse, burn down their house, be governed by greed or passions, be ruthless, cruel, untrustworthy, and so on. But Jesus’s ethics were also different in important ways. Not only were they rooted in the Hebrew biblical tradition and deeply informed by a Jewish apocalyptic worldview, they also were based on a very different understanding of what it meant to be human.  Jesus opposed the ideology of dominance otherwise accepted as common sense throughout the Greek and Roman worlds. His counter-ideology was anti-dominance, an ideology of service. Following Jesus meant not asserting power over others, not compelling them to do your will. Being a disciple meant living in service and submission, giving up power, possessions, and self-will. Ehrman, Bart D.. Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West (p. 94). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

We see, then, though with very different perspectives, Ehrman and Goicoechea both advocate a new interpretation of the person through Jesus

Jesus, however, repeatedly insisted that to be his follower required becoming as powerless and insignificant as a child (Mark 10:15); serving others instead of being served by them (Mark 10:45); becoming a slave to others (Mark 10:43–44); and taking up the cross and giving one’s entire life for others (Mark 10:34–35). These injunctions are often treated, when they are not simply ignored, as prompts to be nice. They are rarely taken seriously, as actual instructions for how to live. But Jesus was quite explicit. When two of his disciples, James and John, requested special places of power and glory in the coming kingdom, Jesus rebuked them and told the entire band of disciples to reject the ideology of this world that stressed the value of personal and social superiority: “You know that those who are supposed to rule the gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. It is not to be this way among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you is to become your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you is to be the slave of all” (Mark 10:42–44). This is one of many paradoxes taught by Jesus. To become great requires giving up greatness; to become most important requires giving up importance. It is not the masters but the slaves who are superior. That is why Jesus says that “the last will be first and the first last” (Matthew 20:16). This wasn’t a clever witticism for us to remember when stuck in the slowest line at checkout. He meant it. The lowly, poor, and outcast will be rewarded in God’s coming kingdom; the powerful, rich, and influential will be humbled. This was an eschatological reality. The way to succeed before God was to fail in the eyes of the world.  What does Jesus think ministers in his name should do? When he sends his disciples to carry his ministry afield, he tells them explicitly to help those in need and take no money for it: “When you go, preach that the kingdom of God is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without being paid” (Matthew 10:7–8). Almost no one today would take that as a literal description of what Jesus wants of his ministers. It is completely impracticable. I don’t disagree. But it is a mistake to think that Jesus meant to be practicable. Notice how the injunction begins: “The kingdom is near.” Jesus’s call for radical action was rooted in his apocalyptic sense that the world was soon to come to a crashing halt. The moment called for extreme measures. In all four Gospels, Jesus himself follows these measures emphatically and tells his followers to do so as well. They are to be enslaved in service to others.  Ehrman, Bart D.. Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West (p. 95). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

What can’t be stressed enough is that for Ehrman Jesus’ ethics were not primarily what we would think of as altruistic, they were instrumental in getting us reward in the coming Kingdom.  It was the watered-down model proposed by Jesus’s followers that became what we now see as altruism.

Jesus and his followers took a different line. The “good life” entailed self-abnegation, a life of sacrifice now as a path to glory in the age to come. Readers may blanch at this idea. There surely must be something deeper to “love thy neighbor” than deferred gratification… right? Didn’t Jesus want people to serve God and live for others with no concern for personal welfare? It is an understandable objection, but if true, why does Jesus so often incentivize this sort of sacrifice by appealing to the life to come? “Sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will receive treasure in heaven” (Mark 10:21). Why not leave the rewards out of it? Why not just say it’s the right thing to do? We can debate motivations and incentives, but what is clear is that Jesus’s ethical injunctions focused not on improving a benefactor’s character and personal well-being in life, but on assisting those in need. This realignment of what it means to be a good person radically affected Western civilization. When millions of people began to internalize Jesus’s teachings—even just in part—and to implement them in their lives, it led to a transformation that was not only personal and internal but social and political. Eventually, the idea we should care for the hungry and the homeless, the outcast and the defenseless, became a dominant common sense.  Ehrman, Bart D.. Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West (pp. 96-97). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

One might object to Ehrman at this point, as I think we must, if Jesus was teaching people to act as they would in the Kingdom (healing the sick as there would be no sickness; giving to the poor as there would be no poverty; etc) it would seem this would be training people how to behave in the Kingdom in order to have a pleasant (eudaimonia) eternity there.  After all, if people were behaving with all their fleshly vices like fighting and arguing there, it would hardly be a happy place. It was like Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel Karate in The Karate Kid movie by having him wax the car and paint the fence!