Delivering the Good Thesis

This is my Tenth year of teaching, and I've read a lot of thesis papers and tried to teach students how to write them. So this is my moment of frustrated clarity on what a good thesis paper should look like. The thesis must be stated in the introduction, argued and defended in the body, and restated and reviewed in the conclusion.

A proper thesis paper must rehearse a controversy or disputed issue, take a position, and state it as the thesis. This all happens in the introductory paragraph and should hit the supporting arguments like a preview for an action movie. Grab the reader by the throat, strap on his seatbelt, slap his bare cheeks with aftershave, cast a spell, I don't care, but get us into the heat of the controversy immediately. Nobody wants to go around the block before they cross the street or on a journey of knowledge Captain Quidnunc.

The thesis paper must distinguish primary and secondary sources!

The thesis must be argue against at least one opposing position in the secondary literature. It must show support from primary sources and interpretations from expert scholars in the secondary sources. This is to say that the thesis must engage the scholarly world and not be written in a hermetically sealed universe of its own pretense. This prevents the paper from sounding like an encyclopedia article, report, or, worst of all, a personal reflection.

A professor friend of mine told me recently that "Jesus does not make good cameos." I laughed my head off! I don't know how many times I've been reading a well intentioned student who inserts his Christian point of view, saying we all know that a certain philosophy is wrong because the Bible says so, and Jesus will prove it when he returns, and I will have won the argument. This comes across as hubris to those who are on the outside looking in, and is usually an unwarranted appeal to authority. If the philosophy is wrong, then Jesus has probably left evidence and arguments in his world to prove it wrong, so that we don't have to invoke his name like it's a heavenly sledgehammer.

We don't always need to argue from a Christian point of view. Sometimes we argue merely from the nature of the research to a conclusion that any human being can understand. If it is done well, it will be compatible with the Christian worldview, and we won't have to get preachy. If we are arguing from an explicitly Christian point of view, then all we need to do is write: "From a Christian point of view ...."

A thesis paper must also restate the thesis in the conclusion and remind the reader of the points scored like the sports reel on ESPN. The introduction is the movie preview and the conclusion is the highlight reel and the body links the two by "delivering the goods."