To paraphrase the Dawg: "Stinkin whities! Why can't they be like us lovin latins!?"
Protestants, in general, whatever they actually think about God, angels, and demons, tend to conclude -- or at least say -- that critical mistakes mean they are worshipping another god, as though there were many or as though what one conceives in one's error has an existence outside oneself.
You're right! Protestants see idolatry everywhere. That's what happens when someone reads and understands the Bible. ++Paul++ reiterated in many of his epistles that immorality itself is idolatry. If you get a chance check out the prophets of old. Whoaa-Dawgies, talk about people obsessed with idolatry. Something about law written on stone, I believe. A certain thread runs throughout Scripture that describes antithesis. As the theologian John Frame puts it:
The Bible often divides people into two classes, antithetically related. There are the sons of Cain and of Seth (Gen. 4-6), Israel and the nations (Ex. 19:5-6), the righteous and the wicked (Ps. 1), the wise and the foolish (Prov. 1:7), the saved and the lost (Matt. 18:11), the children of Abraham and those of the devil (John 8:39-44), the elect and the nonelect (Rom. 9), believers and unbelievers (1 Cor. 6:6), practitioners of the wisdom of the world and of the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1-2), those who walk in light and those who walk in darkness (1 John 1:5-10), the church and the world (1 John 2:15-17).
Check out the rest of the article. I hope that leads to a better understanding of whitey.
Unless that's a joke, it's unfair. As a matter of fact, all this smooching gives me the heebie-jeebies. But there are different styles,and not all kisses mean what onlookers think they do. And the onlooker who assumes they MUST mean what they mean in his hometown is silly.
As to idolatry and all that, one question for me is when does error become idolatry, or is it always idolatry? Were those who were baptized with the Baptism of John and had never even heard that there was a Holy Spirit idolaters?
And the question about the existence of false gods also remains.
"As for the gods of the nations, they are but idols."
To me that suggests that it is nonsensical to say the Muslims worship another god. There simply IS no other God. They either are in error about God or they worship the thing that is not.
I am hereby officially out of gas.
Ah! Is that what those dozens of priests in Philadelphia told the children they molested?
Dooley Wilson must have had it right -- "A kiss is still a kiss; a case of do or die."
And thanks for that great link by Frame. I’ll read it in the a.m.