On the Real Presence
Written by I. Shawn McElhinney
 
 

Prefatory Note on the Revised Essay:

Originally this piece was written in March and April of 2000. It was based on dialogues from late 1999 and was used as a "vacation" of sorts from the tedious work of revising the templates of a treatise which was slated to be (and was) my web essay writing debut. Because of the nature of this project at the time - as well as other "vacation" projects which were written concurrent to it, it was never properly finished. Gradually as my essay writing style developed, there was a seeming disconnect between appearance of my later writings and the earliest writings from pre-July of 2000. (The treatise and treatise-related pieces excepted.)

One of the problems of doing too many pieces at once is that each in its own way suffers a bit. This essay went together rather easily and based on the feedback over the years, it suffered little from its state of incompletion. Therefore, in this revision, I am using 90% of the same material as before. Most of the revisions are minor adjustments to previously written material to finetune it a little. The only really significant differences you will see is that (i) all source references were blockquoted this time (ii) the Patristic citations originally comprising the bulk of Part III of the essay have been moved to an Appendix at the end of the piece. This enabled for a bibliography to be put together with a notes section as this has become my norm when writing an essay. Part III was thus turned into a sort of anticipatory summary if you will of the later Patristic evidences that comprise the Appendix.

Also, the font size was originally larger and the work was hyperlinked throughout section by section. As the third anniversary of this essay's release is about six weeks away, it seemed fitting to revisit the work and complete it. This I have done by adding the bibliography and notes section to this work so that it reads as my online essays written subsequent to this one do. I have also put this on multiple urls with a central outline page at the original link to make it easier to read. Hopefully these adjustments will make for an even better product than the previous version of this work.

I. Shawn McElhinney
17 April 2003
Holy Thursday
 

URL 1

Part I - Introduction:
Part II - Addressing Protestant Text Criticism of John 6
 

URL 2

Part III - Summary of the Real Presence Among the Church Fathers
Part IV - Addressing Some Protestant Presuppositions
Part V - Dichotomies and Antiquity
Part VI - Final Notes

URL 3

Appendix: The Real Presence And Testimonies from the Church Fathers