Attempting to reconcile penal substitutionary atonement with Orthodoxy forces a fundamental redefinition of its philosophical basis and theological structure. At that point you are no longer defending PSA; you are rebuilding it into Orthodox atonement theology.
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Think about it: PSA goes against the very nature of God, because why would God "need" a legal payment for sin? God needs nothing, he's perfect and depends on nothing. The incarnation happened out of love for humanity and to redeem creation.
Fr. Daniel Sysoev held that PSA is correct though not exhaustive. In other words, PSA language captures part of the whole mystery of the atonement. Would you agree? To me this post seems to be drawing a difference in emphasis rather than in substance.
Partially, some elements of PSA can fit with Orthodoxy, but I completely reject the idea that we accept the Reformed position. If we do accept PSA, it's only because someone totally rewrote it to work inside an Orthodox theological framework and kept the label. It's one portion of the mystery, like you said.
Fair enough, I appreciate you pushing back on reducing the atonement to a single view, though I see a lot of people reducing the Orthodox view to ONLY Christus Victor. If you really want to max out on nuance, you should write another post against that too, since as you noted the Orthodox view isn't narrowed down to one model but is a whole mystery with many facets.
PSA comes out of the Reformed take on sacrifice. Once you treat the blood of animal sacrifices as satisfying a punishment owed by the sinner, the whole thing goes off the rails. Hebrews, and the Leviticus it points back to, says blood purifies and consecrates things to God. It's not a payment to God, it's a dedication to Him. A worshipper under the old covenant was sitting down to a meal with his Creator and King. The objects used for this, like God's altar, had to be blessed for that purpose. Living among sinful people gradually made the holy objects common again. It took Christ entering the Heavenly Tabernacle and offering His blood to make the temple of the new covenant permanently pure and set apart for Him. That's why at every liturgy we celebrate and thank Him with a peace offering of leavened bread and wine. It's still the same worship He gave at Mt. Sinai 3000 years ago.
