Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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History: Tribal Rome

Shadi Bartsch (Mirror of the Self) notes that the Romans sometimes regarded the wax death masks of their ancestor (imagines) to be their judges: “In his oration Pro Murena, for example, Cicero, as he tried to move the jurors to acquit a newly minted Roman consul, did not ask how the man could go home to face his living family if convicted, but what he would say to the grieving mask of his distinguished father that awaited him as he entered . . . . Elsewhere, Cicero introduces the dead Appius Claudius Caecus into his oration to ask his disreputable descendant, the libidinous Claudia, how she could ignore the imagines of her ancestors - including his.”  In short, “the imagines were there to be answered to or lived up to,” and so to “motivate as well as reprove.”