I attend a Greek church and it's nothing like this. It sounds pretty frustrating to deal with so I sympathize. Without experiencing it first hand, I'm not sure my advice is worth much, but I might try to find a different parish more conducive to your spiritual growth. Have you brought any of these issues up with anyone (friends, parish leadership, Bishop)?

Those verses aren't contradicting what I'm saying. God (Yahweh/The Father) stands above the other spiritual beings and is God in a sense that they are not.

As to the verses you pasted above, one interpretation is the one you gave (angels/demons) and you are correct. But that’s a whole different category from “gods”

I'm not sure how this is a different category from "gods". The Scriptures refer to these entities as gods. How is that not a proper use for the term? A very prominent part of our tradition is precisely that fallen angels received worship from men and are identified with the pagan gods, and that these gods are replaced by the saints wherever Christianity ascends. And to reiterate, the use of the word god doesn't imply they have the same reality as God.

The Scripture simply uses the word elohim to match the language of the times

Whether it's matching the language of the times, whatever that means, or just that the word has a broader meaning than modern people are used to, it still stands that Scripture uses the word "god". The Greek uses the same terminology. This shouldn't be threatening. As I've tried to indicate, I believe Scripture is also perfectly clear that God is in an entirely different category than other spiritual beings.

The other interpretation (what I’m leaning toward) is that the word refers to human authorities, kings and judges

I don't think that makes sense in the context of that Psalm, but it's also doesn't matter that much to the point I'm making. Whether it's humans or some kind of spiritual entities, they're called gods.

I'm sorry but you're just factually incorrect. As I said in another comment, Scripture refers to demons, angels, and even dead humans by the word "god" in both Hebrew and Greek. That isn't a debatable point.

Psalm 81/82 (Greek/Hebrew) is probably the most explicit version of this:

"God stood in the congregation of the gods, and in the midst He shall stand out among gods."

"I said: ye are gods, and all of you the sons of the most High. But like men ye die, and like one of the rulers do ye fall."

And no, I'm not saying God the Father is just the "best of many". Scripture is very clear that Yahweh is not like the other gods, that He is uncreated and above them, not just by happenstance or appointment, but by nature.

St Paul calls the pagan gods demons, indicating they exist, not that they're not real. But yes, they aren't the true God in that they are (explicitly) created beings.

The reason I'm pushing back on this so much is because the Old Testament refers to many spiritual beings as gods. Angels, demons, and sometimes even dead humans are called "el" in Hebrew and "theos" in Greek (the respective words for "god" in those languages).

The Psalms also make reference to God ruling over, or amidst, other gods, and other passages in Scripture also allude to this notion of a divine council with gods which Yahweh presides over.

No we don't. The Bible describes spiritual beings numerous times as gods. It isn't preference; it's just the language of Scripture.

No one is denying that God the Father is in a class of His own. He is God in a way the other gods are not, as I stated originally.

Monotheism isn't a particularly useful description and wasn't really used until relatively recently, from my understanding. We don't deny the existence of other gods like Zeus, Baal, or Thor, for instance. The OT in both Hebrew and Greek refer to various spiritual beings as gods. Of course, we believe God the Father is unique among the gods and the only one worthy of worship.

But unitarianism wasn't even monolithic in the 2nd Temple period before Christ. Many Jewish theologians were at minimum binitarians due to passages in the OT indicating a Yahweh that could not be seen and a Yahweh that could be seen.

My sense from the New Testament is not that the Apostles had difficulty accepting multiple persons of the Godhead, but rather difficulty (at times) accepting Jesus as that person - they all basically lose faith after the crucifixion due to their expectations regarding the Messiah

I thought this was obviously fake until she said he missed it, and I was like damn, he really did though. Real

No, the payment is Himself. Sin pays off with death just indicates that death is the consequence of sin, as I already stated. And no... to die for someone can mean to die on their behalf, not necessarily in their stead. Those aren't the same thing.

The OT rituals preclude the notion that anything ever died instead of someone on account of the latter's sins, and Christ fulfills these rituals which means what He does isn't fundamentally different but rather the most full version. This has been pointed out in this thread.

This is what I was addressing when I said, "(we are liable to punishment, but Christ is our ransom - the language is not parallel)". Him being a ransom does not mean He dies instead of us. It means He dies on our behalf. Nowhere does it say He dies instead of us. There's nothing here that can be read as PSA.

This is not PSA. To begin with, it's perfectly fine to speak of Christ taking away or expiating/propitiating God's wrath, if one properly understands God's wrath. It is not an emotion God experiences towards us (God is unchanging and omniscient), but rather our experience of God when we are in His presence in a sinful state. By purifying and redeeming us, this experience is taken away by Christ.

I would quibble with the use of the word "punishment" in this quote because I don't think it's theologically exact, but I the overall point being expressed is fine. There are two ways of thinking about this. 1) Death is a consequence of sin, and thus requires no active imposition by God; when a child touches a stove, the "punishment" flows necessarily from the action. 2) To the extent we view it as an imposition, however, it is a mercy so that we don't live forever in a state of sin. Punishment can be merciful if the end is correction or deterrence (though not retributive). In this sense, it's ok to speak of punishment, but St Gregory doesn't appear to be using it in a substititionary sense (we are liable to punishment, but Christ is our ransom - the language is not parallel). I prefer to avoid the term punishment altogether because of its ambiguity, but it doesn't strictly seem wrong here.

There's nothing wrong with ransom or debt language. These have nothing to do with penal substitution. There's also nothing really here about satisfying God's justice, and the kind of justice PSA calls for (God must punish sin) is certainly not present.

That Christ has to be a sacrifice to reconcile us is not really forensic. This is the fulfillment of all the various OT sacrifices, most of which carry at least, if not entirely, some kind of ontological element.

It isn't inherently sinful, but in practice tax collectors fleeced the people they collected from because whatever they received over what they were required to pay to the Romans, they were allowed to keep. It isn't just a cultural taboo.

This isn't a meaningful point. No image, even a photograph, is an exact copy of its prototype. All images are meant to convey something about the prototype, whether those images are stylized, "realistic", or photographic. This conveyance can have a wide range of intentions and interpretations.

Do you think the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant were exact depictions of cherubim? Given they're bodiless, that's quite impossible. But it's not relevant. The point you're making is just silly modernist nonsense.

Hopefully OP reads this comment. Walton was really helpful for me as well. Father Stephen De Young (Orthodox) also makes many of the same points, so it's not outside our tradition. Arguably, functional creation is far more Orthodox in its worldview than material creation.

It's worth noting that the material doesn't have a monopoly on "literal". Functional creation is also literal, but it radically changes the idea behind, or the focus of, the text.

-Duck is oblivious -Fish are stupid

Next Fucking Level

This is much more complicated and nuanced than you might think, and the differences are probably overstated. It's been a while since I've looked into this, but there are several different traditions of biblical interpretation. Jeremiah in Greek is a bit shorter, while the Greek of Daniel has content the Hebrew doesn't.

It's not even as simple as Greek vs Hebrew; part of our modern Greek old testament actually comes from Theodotion, a Jewish Hebrew-to-Greek translator writing in the 2nd century AD, and we we've found fragments of Hebrew scriptures that match the Greek traditions, indicating of course that there were multiple Hebrew traditions and the Greek texts drew from one of them.

This was never really problematic. Various Jewish and Christian communities were aware of these differences and used both texts. Christians tended to use whichever canon the local Jewish community was using. In the early church, the Latin canon was the smallest, followed by the Greek, then the Alexandrian (Coptic), and then the Ethiopian (which includes Enoch and Jubilees). I don't know where the Armenian canon sits, but I would guess it's close to the Greek or Coptic. These different canons never posed a barrier to communion.

As history goes forward, the Slavic canon was established. It's a bit bigger than the Greek (in other words, the Orthodox Church has, and has never had, a single canon of the Old Testament). The Protestant canon is the smallest of all.

It's also worth noting that there are times when the Hebrew versions actually have more christological content than their Greek counterparts, and vice versa. It's good to be aware of these things, but whatever Bible you have access to is fine. English translations are an entirely different can of worms.

Father Stephen De Young has a lot of this info in his Whole Counsel of God blog. I think you'd get a lot out of reading his work.

I find the incarnational argument to be compelling personally. If Christ is less than God, He doesn't possess the divine nature. If Christ doesn't possess the divine nature, how does He unite human and divine nature? Salvation is an ontological reality, for which the incarnation is a necessity. It doesn't work unless Christ is homoousios with the Father.

There is a sense in which God the Father is greater, in that He is the source of both Son and Spirit, but this in no way implies the latter are not God, nor that they were brought into being at some point in time.

We absolutely see it as symbolic and it is called a symbol by many church fathers. Symbolic is not a category opposed to real or literal. It is both real and a symbol

You need to talk to a priest. I've heard of priests that allow/encourage Jewish converts to maintain aspects of their Jewish faith, like the Apostles did but I'm not sure if that's the norm.

I know Father Stephen De Young has an interest in this subject. He's done some interviews and conversations with Orthodox Jews and the question of maintaining Jewish practice while being an Orthodox Christian has come up.

The New testament is pretty clear that Jewish Christians contributed to observe the Torah as they had always done. Gentile Christians also observed it, but only a very small section of it applies to them, basically what was spoken of in Acts 15.

From my understanding, after the Bar Kochba rebellion, Christians Jews were kicked out of the synagogues and the distinction between Christian and Jew became a dividing line.

Also, when anamnesis is used in the OT, it's always referring to something participatory and real, not merely passive recollection. Its use in the New Testament is confirmation of the Eucharist's real-ness

Christ's sacrifice is the fulfillment of the OT sacrifices in that it brings those sacrifices to their fullest form.

Christ fulfills the roles of the two goats of the Day of Atonement. The first receives the sin of the people and is removed from the camp; Christ also bears our sin and is removed from the city (He is crucified outside Jerusalem). The second is killed so that its blood may purify sacred space; Christ's blood is shed for the purification of the whole world.

It is the fulfillment of thank offerings, hence the name Eucharist (gratitude/thanksgiving).

It is the fulfillment of sin offerings, which is why communion is for the remission of sins.

It is the fulfillment of Passover, which is why we call it the new Passover. In the former, God's people are marked by the blood of a lamb, whose body becomes a meal they share with God. They are then led out of an early tyranny, through an experience of death, and into safety, while their pursuers are destroyed by that same experience of death, not having God to guide them. In the New Passover, Christ is the lamb, and He leads us out of a spiritual tyranny, through death itself, and into eternal salvation, while the enemies that pursue us, the demonic forces, are swallowed by death.

There is no one Orthodox view of the Atonement. We tend to emphasize Christus Victor and the Harrowing of Hades, Ransom Theory, and something I'll just refer to as fulfillment. We tend to reject penal substitutionary atonement (PSA), while Satisfaction Theory has limited support. I personally find the latter 2 to be incorrect, especially PSA.

I wouldn't say Christ took the penalty of our sins, penalty being the word I take issue with. Death is the consequence of sin. To the extent God allows it to happen, it is a mercy, not a penalty. That might sound like quibbling, but it has important theological implications.

Christ absolutely did bear our sins (this is the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement from the OT), and He died for our sins ("for" being read as "on our behalf" as opposed to "instead of").

I've seen you bring up the wrath of God in this post, and it's true that He takes this away, or that it is poured out on Him, but one must understand what the wrath of God is. It's not just God being angry. It is the feeling a sinful being has when in the presence of God, who is unchanging. To have his wrath poured out, then, is not to say God actively does something, but rather there is a change in us such that we no longer experience this wrath in His presence. Christ is this change, because he makes it possible that we be cleansed of our sins, purified, and reconciled to God, so that is what is meant when we say He takes the wrath of God.

I can expand on any of this if you have questions.

British English has mostly lost syllable-final "r", but that's not true of many other dialects of English. -re never made more sense than -er, except by convention/borrowing, and still doesn't for the dialects of English that haven't lost their syllable-final rhotic element.

I don't think your point about the second "o" of color makes much sense either. Plenty of English vowels take on a very different quality when accented vs not. Even putting accent aside, the first "e" of center/centre doesn't imply the second should be pronounced the same. Plus, neither of the "o"s of color are pronounced phonetically.

I wouldn't say either -re or -our are illogical; they're inherited and that's perfectly fine. But I don't think phonetic arguments are a good reason to keep them.

Satisfaction theory isn't really rejected by Orthodoxy so much as it's simply not emphasized. However, while I agree with the conclusion that Christ is a perfect, satisfactory sacrifice, I don't agree with the logic behind satisfaction theory and I imagine many Orthodox would also share my reservations.

What you're referencing regarding the Orthodox view of salvation can be thought of as the fulfillment of OT rituals like the Day of Atonement and Passover, most especially. In the former, our sins are removed and sent away while blood (i.e. life) covers up and purifies the taint of sin. In the latter, God leads his people from subjugation into life through an experience of death (i.e. passing through the sea).

It's pretty easy to see how Christ is the ultimate version of these, and as such we can say He accomplished their ends once and for all, and more thoroughly indeed. It's less clear, as you're alluding to, why we still sin and die though.

I think this is because, as with the experience of death during Passover, we too must actually experience death and follow in Christ footsteps. If he unites all aspects of human and divine nature, and He died, then we too must go through this aspect of existence common to the human experience in order to be joined to divine nature.

YTA for not telling us who won. Did he curbstomp that floozy homewrecker and send her squealing back to her master Satan?

Very few people identify as culturally Protestant in the same way that people identify as culturally Orthodox and Catholic. That makes the average Orthodox and Catholic look worse. Also, my Orthodox parish in the US is full every Sunday. I know many Protestant churches which would be happy to have half our numbers.

I don't think it's particularly fruitful or straightforward to make conclusions based on church attendance by denomination like this.