England · OCRSyllabus
Religious Studies syllabus, dot point by dot point
Every dot point in the England Religious Studiessyllabus, with a focused answer for each one. Click any dot point for a worked explainer, past exam questions, and links to related dot points. Written by Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic's latest AI.
Developments in Christian Thought (Component 03)
Module overview →- Is Augustine right that human nature is corrupted by original sin and the divided will, dependent on God's grace, or is his account too pessimistic?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.16 min answer →
- What does Bonhoeffer's life and thought teach about Christian duty to God and the state, discipleship, and resisting injustice?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.16 min answer →
- Should Christian ethics follow the Bible as a source of commands, the principle of love alone, or the combined authority of scripture, church and reason?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.16 min answer →
- How should Christians understand heaven, hell, purgatory and judgement, and are these best read literally or symbolically?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.16 min answer →
- How have changing views of gender roles, family and motherhood challenged traditional Christian teaching, and how have Christians responded to secular feminism?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.16 min answer →
- Do Ruether and Daly show that Christianity is irredeemably patriarchal, or can it be reformed to include feminine images and language about God?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.16 min answer →
- Can humans know God through reason and the natural world (natural theology), or only through God's self-revelation in faith, scripture and Christ?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.16 min answer →
- Should Christianity use Marx's analysis of class and structural sin to fight poverty through liberation theology, or does this politicise the faith?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.16 min answer →
- How should Christians live and engage in a multi-faith society, and should they take part in inter-faith dialogue and the scriptural reasoning it involves?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.16 min answer →
- Is salvation found only through Christ (exclusivism), through Christ but available to others (inclusivism), or through many religions equally (pluralism)?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.16 min answer →
- Do the criticisms of Dawkins and Freud, secularisation, and the 'spiritual but not religious' trend show that Christianity is in decline, or can it answer them?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.16 min answer →
- Was Jesus only a teacher of wisdom and moral example, a political liberator, or the divine Son of God, and how do his divinity and humanity relate?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.16 min answer →
Philosophy of Religion (Component 01)
Module overview →- How do Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's four causes and Prime Mover shape the way philosophers reason about God and reality?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.17 min answer →
- Does the existence of a changing, contingent universe require a first cause or necessary being beyond itself, or can the universe be a brute fact?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.16 min answer →
- Can the existence of God be proved from the definition of God alone, by reason without appeal to the world?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).16 min answer →
- Can religious experiences such as mystical and conversion experiences count as evidence for the existence of God, or are they better explained psychologically and physiologically?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.16 min answer →
- If God is beyond human comprehension, how can human language describe God: only by negation, by analogy, or through symbol?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.16 min answer →
- Is religious language meaningful, and if it cannot be verified or falsified, is it still saying something or only expressing an attitude or a way of life?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.16 min answer →
- Are mind and body two distinct substances, as Plato and Descartes hold, or is the mind nothing over and above the physical body, as materialists argue?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.17 min answer →
- Does the order, regularity and apparent purpose of the universe show that it was designed by God, or can it be explained without a designer?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.16 min answer →
- Are the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence and eternity coherent, and can God's foreknowledge be reconciled with human free will?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).16 min answer →
- Is the existence of evil and suffering compatible with an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God, and do the Augustinian and Irenaean theodicies succeed?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.17 min answer →
Religion and Ethics (Component 02)
Module overview →- What do corporate social responsibility, globalisation and whistleblowing demand of business, and how do Friedman's shareholder view and the ethical theories answer?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.16 min answer →
- Is conscience the voice of reason directing us to the good (Aquinas), the internalised voice of authority (Freud), or something else?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.16 min answer →
- How do the sanctity of life and quality of life principles, and the ethical theories, apply to voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia?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.16 min answer →
- If our actions are determined by prior causes or by God, can we be free and morally responsible, and is praise, blame and punishment ever justified?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.16 min answer →
- Does Kant's categorical imperative, grounded in duty and the good will, give a sound and rational basis for morality, or is its rigid universalism a weakness?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.16 min answer →
- What do moral words like 'good' mean: do they describe natural facts, point to a non-natural property known by intuition, or merely express our feelings?Component 02 Meta-ethics: ethical naturalism, intuitionism (Moore and the naturalistic fallacy) and emotivism (Ayer and Stevenson), and the cognitive and non-cognitive divide.16 min answer →
- Does Aquinas's natural law, with its primary precepts and doctrine of double effect, provide a reliable guide to moral action, or is it too rigid and dependent on a fixed human nature?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.16 min answer →
- How do natural law, situation ethics, Kantian ethics and utilitarianism approach premarital and extramarital sex and homosexuality, and how have changing religious beliefs shaped the debate?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.16 min answer →
- Is Fletcher's situation ethics, with agape as the only absolute, a liberating and loving approach to morality, or is it too subjective and open to abuse?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.16 min answer →
- Does utilitarianism, by judging acts on the happiness they produce, give a sound moral theory, or do the calculation, the tyranny of the majority and the neglect of justice undermine it?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.16 min answer →