Idols Old & New
S. M. Hutchens on the Second Commandment
When our Lord took Peter, James, and John, to a high mountain, there to be transfigured before them, appearing with Moses and Elijah in the shining garments of heaven, Peter, ever the impulsive disciple, suggested that three shelters be built in their honor. And so Peter, who appears so often in the Gospels as a kind of generic man who doesn’t understand the things of God, demonstrates in his action a fundamental and natural human trait: the desire to house the divine, to hold and domesticate, as it were, his god by at once honoring him and establishing him within something of his own making.
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S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
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