Eduqas A-Level Religious Studies Component 3 Teleological Ethics and Free Will: a complete overview

Eduqas A-Level Religious Studies Component 3 is Religion and Ethics. Its second half (Themes 3 and 4) covers the teleological (goal-based) ethical theories and the great question of freedom: whether the right act is the one with the best outcome (love, or happiness), how those theories apply to life and death, and whether we are free and responsible at all. This overview ties together the topic pages and explains how the paper is examined.

How Component 3 works

Component 3 is a two-hour written exam worth 100 marks. It has two sections: in Section A you answer one question from a choice of two, and in Section B one from a choice of three. Every question is in two parts: part (a) is worth 20 marks for AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and part (b) is worth 30 marks for AO2 (analysis and evaluation), so the larger part (b) carries more weight.

Theme 3: teleological ethics

Situation ethics (Fletcher) makes agape the one absolute and does the most loving thing in each situation, through the four working principles and six fundamental principles. Utilitarianism judges acts by the happiness they produce: Bentham's act utilitarianism (the principle of utility and hedonic calculus) and Mill's rule utilitarianism (higher and lower pleasures, the harm principle). Both are applied to issues of life and death (abortion, euthanasia), where the clash is sanctity of life against quality of life.

Theme 4: determinism and free will

Determinism comes in hard form and in philosophical (Locke's locked room), scientific (universal causation) and psychological (Skinner's behaviourism) versions, and threatens moral responsibility. Libertarianism (Sartre's radical freedom and bad faith) affirms genuine free will; compatibilism (Hume) holds freedom and determinism are both true. Religious concepts of predestination (Augustine, Calvin's double predestination) raise the theological version of the problem and the question of God's justice.

How Component 3 is examined

• Two parts per question. Part (a) is accurate, organised exposition (AO1); part (b) is a sustained, balanced argument that reaches a justified conclusion (AO2).
• Evaluation is the lever. Because part (b) is worth 30 to part (a)'s 20, the theories must be argued and judged, not only described.