Religious StudiesQ&A by dot point

Component 03 Augustine on human nature: the state before and after the Fall, original sin and concupiscence, the divided will, the summum bonum, and the necessity of God's grace, with strengths and weaknesses.

Component 03 Christian moral action: Bonhoeffer on duty to God and the state, discipleship and the cost of discipleship, the role of the Church, civil disobedience, and the Confessing Church.

Component 03 Christian moral principles: the Bible as a source of moral teaching, the roles of reason, conscience and Church, the principle of love (agape), and the distinction between heteronomous and autonomous Christian ethics.

Component 03 Death and the afterlife: heaven, hell and purgatory, particular and final judgement, the beatific vision, election (limited, unlimited and universalism), and the parable of the sheep and the goats, read literally or symbolically.

Component 03 Gender and society: Christian teaching on the roles of men and women in the family and society, motherhood and family life, and the impact of secular views of gender and of feminism on Christian practice.

Component 03 Gender and theology: feminist theology and the critique of patriarchy, the reformist theology of Rosemary Radford Ruether and the post-Christian feminism of Mary Daly, and the implications for language about God.

Component 03 Knowledge of God's existence: natural knowledge of God (reason, the world, the sensus divinitatis of Calvin), revealed knowledge (faith, grace, scripture, Christ), and Barth's rejection of natural theology.

Component 03 Liberation theology and Marx: the influence of Marx, structural sin, the preferential option for the poor, orthopraxis and base communities (Gutierrez), and Christian and Church responses to Marxism.

Component 03 Religious pluralism and society: Christian responses to a multi-faith society, religious freedom, the development of inter-faith dialogue, the use of scripture in dialogue, and Christianity in public life.

Component 03 Religious pluralism and theology: exclusivism, inclusivism (Rahner's anonymous Christians) and pluralism (Hick), and Christian theology of the relationship between religions and salvation.

Component 03 The challenge of secularism: secularism and secularisation, Dawkins's New Atheism, Freud's psychological critique of religion, the spiritual but not religious movement, and Christianity in public life.

Component 03 The person of Jesus Christ: Jesus as teacher of wisdom, as liberator, and as the Son of God, the relationship of his divinity and humanity, and the significance of miracles and the resurrection.

Component 01 Ancient philosophical influences: Plato (the Forms, the Form of the Good, the analogy of the cave) and Aristotle (the four causes and the Prime Mover), and the contrast between Plato's rationalism and Aristotle's empiricism.

Component 01 Arguments from observation: the cosmological argument of Aquinas (the first three Ways, from motion, causation and contingency) and the Kalam argument, together with the criticisms of Hume and Russell.

Component 01 Arguments from reason: the ontological argument of Anselm (Proslogion II and III), with Descartes's and Malcolm's developments, together with the criticisms of Gaunilo (the perfect island) and Kant (existence is not a predicate).

Component 01 The nature and impact of religious experience: mystical experience (William James), conversion and corporate experience, the value of experience, and challenges from physiology, psychology (Freud) and the diversity of experiences.

Component 01 Issues in religious language (negative, analogical and symbolic): the apophatic via negativa, Aquinas's analogy of attribution and proportion, and Tillich's account of religious language as symbol.

Component 01 Issues in religious language (twentieth-century perspectives): the verification principle (Ayer), the falsification debate (Flew, Hare and Mitchell) and Wittgenstein's language games.

Component 01 Soul, mind and body: Plato's dualism and the immortal soul, Aristotle's soul as the form of the body, Descartes's substance dualism, and the materialist challenge (including Dawkins), with implications for life after death.

Component 01 Arguments from observation: the teleological (design) argument of Aquinas (the Fifth Way) and Paley (the watch analogy), together with Hume's criticisms and the challenge of Darwinian evolution.

Component 01 The nature of God: the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence and eternity, the dilemma of foreknowledge and free will, and the contrast between God as timeless (Boethius, Aquinas) and everlasting (Swinburne).

Component 01 The problem of evil: the logical and evidential problems (Mackie, Rowe), the Augustinian theodicy (privation, the Fall, free will) and the Irenaean (Hick's soul-making) theodicy, with their strengths and weaknesses.

Component 02 Applied ethics (business ethics): corporate social responsibility, globalisation and whistleblowing, Friedman's shareholder view, and the application of Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to business.

Component 02 Conscience: Aquinas's theological account (ratio, synderesis, conscientia) and Freud's psychological account (the super-ego and guilt), with the contrast between conscience as reason and conscience as a construct.

Component 02 Applied ethics (euthanasia): the sanctity of life and quality of life principles, voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia, and the application of natural law and situation ethics to end-of-life decisions.

Component 02 Free will and moral responsibility: hard determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism (soft determinism), the influence of religious ideas of predestination, and the implications for moral responsibility, praise, blame and punishment.

Component 02 Kantian ethics: the good will and duty, the categorical imperative and its three formulations (universal law, ends in themselves, kingdom of ends), and the summum bonum, with strengths and weaknesses.

Component 02 Meta-ethics: ethical naturalism, intuitionism (Moore and the naturalistic fallacy) and emotivism (Ayer and Stevenson), and the cognitive and non-cognitive divide.

Component 02 Natural law: Aquinas's four tiers of law, the primary and secondary precepts, real and apparent goods, and the doctrine of double effect, with strengths and weaknesses as an ethical theory.

Component 02 Applied ethics (sexual ethics): premarital and extramarital sex and homosexuality, the application of natural law, situation ethics, Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, and the influence of developments in religious belief.

Component 02 Situation ethics: Fletcher's agape, the four working principles (pragmatism, relativism, positivism, personalism) and the six fundamental principles, with strengths and weaknesses as an ethical theory.

Component 02 Utilitarianism: Bentham's hedonic calculus, Mill's higher and lower pleasures and harm principle, and the contrast between act and rule utilitarianism, with strengths and weaknesses.