You appear to be correctly arguing against something no one claimed. You misunderstood Armstrong’s meaning. This is what she said:
Yet many of P’s first readers would have found the first chapter of Genesis rather a shock. In the ancient Near East, this vision of the creation was radically new. God appears in the very first sentence without any introduction. P uses the formal divine title “Elohim,” a term that sums up everything that the divine can mean for humanity. In a world where there were many deities, a reader would be likely to ask, “Which god are we talking about?” or “What is Elohim?” Most of the Near Eastern deities had parents and complex biographies that distinguished them from one another, but P introduces his Elohim without telling us anything about his origins or past history in primordial time.
She is not claiming every use of Elohim is the formal divine title. She is saying that Elohim – in how P is using it-- is a formal title that “sums up everything that the divine can mean for humanity.”
You’re making this like it’s your interpretation vs mine. I’m pitting yours versus the entire Orthodox Church in its first 1500 years of existence. Transubstantiation was not the belief. That was a later metaphysical explanation of the Church’s dogma that in the Eucharist we are dealing with the real flesh and blood of Jesus. That is is the believe that is found in the earliest church and throughout until probably Zwingli, though I could be wrong. I have consistently hoisted my interpretation of Jesus in John (and the Synoptics) and Paul on the back of that consensus. That is clearly how they understood it and practiced it throughout the Church. Also, since I am not Protestant, I absolutely can claim the Magisterium’s authoritative pronouncements are correct. You can absolutely disagree. And that would be fruitless to argue about but as you know, it is the view of the Catholic Church, and mine, that God left behind a Church, not an army of individuals with pocket Bibles and private interpretations of scripture. Even if you disregard Catholicism in such a sense, you do not need to disregard the entire Church the same. You might be able to argue the scriptures were too guarded at one point but it’s apparent to me the pendulum has swung wildly out of control in the opposite direction. If you can willy-nilly prioritize your private interpretation over virtually 1500 years of almost universal Church history, I am not sure why I am expected think its my view of scripture vs yours here? It’s the Church vs you and a few modern sectarians.
Oh you do come out with some ridiculous arguments.
Read my other post. I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that there is no definitive view of Scripture, and I certainly do not claim mine over any other.