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This seems like a massive oversimplification. I’ve been exposed to a fair amount of Orthodox content, including by people with whom I’m in direct contact, and they all seem to be in lockstep agreement that the pagan “Gods” were in fact demons — they use that word over and over — to whom their worshippers were giving profane worship. It seems like the Orthodox mostly don’t directly blame those people for being so fooled, especially as Christ had not yet arrived to spread the good word, nor do the Orthodox apparently believe that such “demons” were (or are) purely malevolent beings. But it seems pretty clear to at least Orthodox Christians — unless I’m somehow misunderstanding their words — that pagans who believed their Gods were supreme and benevolent beings were totally mistaken about the true nature of the beings which they worshipped.
This is the traditional teaching in all branches of Christianity; the fundamentalist opposition to yoga is based on it(Hindu gods being, well, pagan deities).
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Fair enough!
Scripture itself is not exactly simple on this, but it does refer to "gods" (depending on your translation, and including, yes, associating them with what might be translated "demons" or the like) and there's a very long tradition in Christianity (and Judaism) of contrasting God with the other gods not by virtue of being more real but by virtue of being superior - more powerful and benevolent than the gods of others. This is somewhat muddied by mocking idols as being powerless, but there are a number of passages in both the Old and New Testaments that do give credence to the idea of other spiritual beings that are worshiped as gods, so - walks like a duck, talks like a duck - arguably fair to call it a duck!
I grant you that there is a difference in association between "DEMON" and "GOD" but it seems to me like your Orthodox friends and the pagans agreed descriptively on what was being worshiped by pagans (very powerful spiritual beings). I will admit to not being an expert in pagan belief systems, but I am unaware of any pagan pantheon where the gods were "supreme and benevolent" in the sense that we view the Christian God. In the mythologies I am aware of, the gods fight each other, have differing values, typically do not serve all sects or people groups equally (or want to, they often seem to have their own little cults of devotees rather than aspiring towards some sort of universal status), and as I recall often seem to have stumbled into their powers through violence or subterfuge (instead of having them by right as an un-created Creator) and sometimes do things that are ~evil to humans because they can. Now, obviously you have people who say this is also true of the Christian God, but it seems to me there is a big difference between the self-story of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the self-story of the various pagan gods. In fact - and I think there is supposed to be fairly decent evidence for this textually, although, again, not my area of expertise - in many ways the Judeo-Christian self-story of God (at least in Genesis) seems set up as a refutation of the claims of other gods - a "setting the facts straight," if you will.
Now, Christians believe that only one God should be worshiped. Thus whatever the characteristics of any other entities, if you worship them you are mistaken about their true nature. But I think one could still call entities that had the characteristics of the "gods" of various mythologies "gods" fairly, even if in the Christian theological framework they were not the One True God who was owed worship.
TDLR; to the question, I would say that Christianity has no problems with the pagan gods being real but it does have a problem with them being worshiped.
And Christians consider pagan "gods" to be very different from the true God, in that they are creatures acting only due to God's (temporary) self-restraint vs. being the creator of everything and ground of existence itself.
Yes. But my recollection is that pagan gods are often (typically?) also not the Creator of everything and the ground of existence itself.
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