I particularly liked your last paragraph, where you undertake an analysis of the topic and take a stand for your own position. This, of course, is what we all want to hear.

I have some minor technical details that may be of use to you as you attempt to revise your paper:

1. Organization: All good academic writing needs a clearly stated thesis. You do a nice job with the current introduction, but a thesis statement would help to guide you through the writing. A thesis statement “contains a single idea, clearly focused and specifically stated…[that] can be though of as a central idea phrased in the form of an assertion.” (Harbrace Handbook, 14ed, 411-12) Each topic sentence, subsequent to the thesis, ties your material back to that main assertion.

2. When you introduce an historical figure that your reader is not likely to know, give a short appositional introduction. For example: …Tertullian, presbyter in the church of Carthage in the second century, …

3. Watch the consistency of your use of verbs. Shifts in verb tense or mood interfere with clarity. That is, when speaking of the past, use past tenses and don’t shift back and forth from past tense to present tense.

4. Finally, a bit of constructive criticism from one of my professors: “Knit, don’t build.” The point of this phrase concerns the stacking of one fact upon another, something in the nature of building a brick wall. The ideal method in writing is to weave the facts together, something like a sweater. In good writing, each sentence is connected to the previous sentence and the following sentence. This is often done with backward referencing and anticipatory detail.

Again….my comments are mean to help you and do not constitute negative remarks. I look forward to hearing you present the paper tomorrow.

Dr. Williams