WJEC Eduqas A Level Religious Studies

Complete Specification — A/A* Revision Notes

Assessment Map

Component 1 — A Study of Religion

• 2 hours
• 100 marks
• 33⅓%

Choose one:

• Christianity
• Islam
• Judaism
• Buddhism
• Hinduism
• Sikhism

Each religion is organised into four themes:

1. religious figures and sacred texts;
2. religious concepts and religious life;
3. significant social and historical developments in religious thought;
4. religious practices that shape religious identity.

Component 2 — Philosophy of Religion

• 2 hours
• 100 marks
• 33⅓%

Four themes:

1. arguments for the existence of God;
2. challenges to religious belief;
3. religious experience;
4. religious language.

Component 3 — Religion and Ethics

• 2 hours
• 100 marks
• 33⅓%

Four themes:

1. ethical thought;
2. deontological ethics;
3. teleological ethics;
4. determinism and free will.

COMPONENT 2 — PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Theme 1 — Arguments for the Existence of God

Cosmological Arguments

Aquinas' First Three Ways

1. motion/change;
2. efficient causation;
3. contingency and necessity.

All are a posteriori and inductive.

Kalam Cosmological Argument — William Lane Craig

Core reasoning:

1. whatever begins to exist has a cause;
2. universe began to exist;
3. therefore universe has a cause.

Craig rejects an actual infinite regress and argues for a personal creator.

Evaluation

Strengths:

• intuitive causal reasoning;
• modern cosmology can be used in support.

Challenges:

• Hume questions extending causal reasoning to universe as whole;
• why must cause be God?
• quantum/cosmological models complicate "beginning".

Teleological Arguments

Aquinas' Fifth Way

Unintelligent natural things act toward ends. Like an arrow needs an archer, natural order suggests intelligence.

Paley

Watchmaker analogy: complexity and purpose imply design.

F.R. Tennant

• anthropic argument;
• aesthetic argument.

Universe appears especially suitable for intelligent life and beauty.

Hume

Critiques:

• weak analogy;
• universe may not resemble a machine;
• designer might be imperfect;
• multiple designers possible.

Darwin

Natural selection gives non-theistic explanation for biological adaptation.

Ontological Argument

Anselm

God is greatest conceivable being. Existence in reality is greater than existence only in mind. Therefore God exists.

Gaunilo

Perfect-island parody.

Descartes

Existence belongs to concept of supremely perfect being as necessarily as triangle has three angles.

Kant

Existence is not a predicate.

Evaluation

Issue: can conceptual necessity establish real existence?

Theme 2 — Challenges to Religious Belief

Problem of Evil

Augustine

Evil is privation of good.

God created good world. Evil entered through misuse of free will.

Natural evil linked traditionally to disorder resulting from Fall.

Strength: preserves God's goodness.

Weakness:

• evolutionary history challenges literal Fall;
• why create beings capable of catastrophic evil?

Irenaeus / Hick

Humans created immature and must grow into divine likeness.

World is a vale of soul-making.

Epistemic distance preserves freedom.

Strength: suffering can develop virtues impossible in painless world.

Weakness: horrendous suffering may destroy rather than develop.

Dostoevsky-style Protest

Some suffering, especially of children, may be morally unacceptable even if claimed to serve greater purpose.

Psychology and Religion

Freud

Religion can be understood as:

• illusion;
• wish fulfilment;
• projection of father figure.

Criticism: reductive and difficult to test.

Jung

Religious symbols may emerge from collective unconscious and archetypes.

Religion can support psychological integration.

Evaluation: more positive but empirical basis disputed.

Atheism

Dawkins-style critique

Natural explanations reduce need for God as explanatory hypothesis.

Humanism

Moral meaning and purpose possible without theism.

A* issue: show difference between:

• disproving God;
• showing God unnecessary as explanation.

Theme 3 — Religious Experience

Mystical Experience

William James

Characteristics:

• ineffability;
• noetic quality;
• transiency;
• passivity.

James judges experience partly by its fruits, not only origin.

Otto

Numinous: [ mysterium\ tremendum\ et\ fascinans ]

Encounter with wholly other produces awe and attraction.

Stace

Mysticism involves unity. Distinguishes:

• extrovertive;
• introvertive.

Conversion Experience

Sudden or gradual transformation of:

• belief;
• identity;
• conduct.

Potential explanations:

• divine encounter;
• social influence;
• psychological crisis.

Near-Death Experience

Reports may include:

• tunnel;
• light;
• detachment from body;
• peace.

Natural explanations: brain chemistry, oxygen deprivation, expectation.

Religious interpretation: possible glimpse of afterlife.

Corporate Religious Experience

Shared experience in:

• worship;
• revival;
• pilgrimage.

Strength: multiple witnesses.

Weakness: social contagion and expectation may influence reports.

Evaluating Religious Experience

Swinburne

Principle of credulity: trust experience unless defeater.

Principle of testimony: trust sincere reports unless reason not to.

Challenges:

• conflicting religious experiences;
• hallucinations;
• neurological explanations;
• prior cultural expectations.

A* judgement: natural cause does not automatically show experience has no religious meaning.

Theme 4 — Religious Language

Cognitive and Non-Cognitive

Cognitive: truth-apt claims.

Non-cognitive: expresses attitudes, commitments, symbols or forms of life.

Logical Positivism

Meaningful statements:

• analytic;
• empirically verifiable.

Religious claims appear unverifiable.

Criticism

Verification principle itself is not straightforwardly empirically verifiable.

Falsification

Flew

Assertions should permit evidence against them.

Parable of gardener: believers may endlessly qualify God-claims.

Hare

Bliks: fundamental interpretive frameworks.

Mitchell

Believer may retain trust despite contrary evidence without making belief meaningless.

Analogy

Aquinas

Religious language analogical rather than univocal/equivocal.

Analogy of attribution/proportion.

Strength: speaks meaningfully while preserving transcendence.

Weakness: depends on prior knowledge of God.

Symbol

Tillich

Symbols:

• point beyond themselves;
• participate in what they symbolise;
• open levels of reality.

John Randall

Religious symbols can:

• motivate;
• express values;
• strengthen community;
• disclose dimensions of experience.

Myth

Myths communicate:

• values;
• identity;
• existential meaning.

Not necessarily failed science.

Challenge: competing myths and changing interpretations.

Language Games — Wittgenstein

Meaning comes from use within a particular form of life.

Religious language meaningful to participants.

Challenge:

• risks isolation;
• difficult interfaith discussion;
• may evade external truth testing.

COMPONENT 3 — RELIGION AND ETHICS

Theme 1 — Ethical Thought

Divine Command Theory

Morality grounded in God's will/commands.

Robert Adams

Modified Divine Command: God's commands are grounded in God's loving nature.

Challenges:

• Euthyphro dilemma;
• arbitrariness;
• conflicting claimed revelations.

Virtue Theory

Aristotle

Focus on character and: [ \boxed{eudaimonia} ]

Virtues developed through habit.

Doctrine of mean: virtue lies between excess and deficiency relative to circumstances.

Christian links: Beatitudes and character virtues.

Weakness: not always clear what to do in a specific dilemma.

Ethical Egoism

Max Stirner

Moral agent should pursue rational long-term self-interest.

Not crude immediate selfishness.

Criticism:

• social injustice;
• no impartial reason to privilege self;
• harms community.

Meta-Ethics

Naturalism — F.H. Bradley

Moral statements can describe objective natural features and be true/false.

Challenges:

Hume's Law

Cannot straightforwardly derive an "ought" from an "is".

Moore

Naturalistic fallacy and open-question argument.

Intuitionism — H.A. Prichard

Moral duties recognised intuitively.

Strength: preserves objective moral truth.

Weakness: conflicting intuitions have no clear resolution mechanism.

Emotivism

Moral statements express attitudes rather than objective facts.

Associated with:

• A.J. Ayer;
• C.L. Stevenson.

"X is wrong" resembles:

"Boo to X."

Strength: explains persuasive/emotional role of moral language.

Weakness: seems to reduce rational ethical disagreement.

Theme 2 — Deontological Ethics

Aquinas' Natural Law

Foundations

God created rational order. Human purpose discovered through reason.

Four Levels

• eternal law;
• divine law;
• natural law;
• human law.

Primary Precepts

Typically:

• preserve life;
• reproduce;
• educate;
• worship God;
• live in society.

Real/Apparent Goods

Real goods fulfil human telos.

Double Effect

Bad side effect can be tolerated where not intended and proportionate.

Evaluation

Strengths:

• objective;
• structured;
• supports human flourishing.

Weaknesses:

• depends on fixed human nature;
• can be rigid;
• difficult in plural society.

Finnis

Modern Natural Law.

Basic goods include:

• life;
• knowledge;
• play;
• aesthetic experience;
• friendship/sociability;
• practical reason;
• religion.

Practical reason directs pursuit.

Strength: less dependent on biologically narrow purpose.

Weakness: why accept listed basic goods as self-evident?

Proportionalism

Retains moral norms but allows exception for proportionate reason.

Strength: avoids absolute rigidity.

Weakness: can collapse into consequentialism.

Theme 3 — Teleological Ethics

Situation Ethics — Fletcher

Only absolute: [ \boxed{agape} ]

Four Working Principles

• pragmatism;
• relativism;
• positivism;
• personalism.

Six Propositions

Core: love is intrinsically good and determines right action.

Applications include contemporary moral problems.

Strength: person-centred and adaptable.

Weakness: subjective and difficult to predict loving outcome.

Bentham — Act Utilitarianism

Principle: [ \boxed{\text{greatest happiness for greatest number}} ]

Hedonic calculus:

• intensity;
• duration;
• certainty;
• remoteness;
• fecundity;
• purity;
• extent.

Applications in Eduqas include:

• animal experimentation for medical research;
• nuclear weapons as deterrent.

Weakness: can permit injustice if total pleasure increases.

Mill — Rule Utilitarianism

Higher vs lower pleasures.

Higher: intellectual/moral.

Lower: bodily.

Harm principle: freedom should be limited mainly to prevent harm to others.

Rules generally justified by utility.

Strength: protects justice more than crude act calculation.

Weakness: if rule breaks when utility requires, may collapse toward act utilitarianism.

Theme 4 — Determinism and Free Will

Religious Determinism

God's:

• omniscience;
• omnipotence;
• providence

can appear to constrain human freedom.

Calvin

Predestination: salvation ultimately determined by God.

Challenge: moral responsibility seems threatened.

Hard Determinism

All events/actions causally determined.

Sources:

• biology;
• psychology;
• environment.

Skinner

Behaviour shaped by conditioning histories.

Darrow-style critique of responsibility

If actions caused, punishment should focus on protection/rehabilitation rather than desert.

Libertarianism

Humans genuinely choose among alternatives.

Supports:

• praise;
• blame;
• moral responsibility.

Challenges: how can uncaused choice avoid randomness?

Compatibilism / Soft Determinism

Freedom means acting according to one's desires/reasons without external coercion, even if desires have causes.

Strength: reconciles causation with responsibility.

Weakness: critics say it redefines rather than preserves genuine freedom.

Conscience

Religious and non-religious accounts can include:

• divine guidance;
• reason;
• psychological development.

Aquinas

Conscience applies moral knowledge to action.

Freud

Superego internalises parental/social authority.

Evaluation: guilt may reflect conditioning rather than moral truth.

COMPONENT 1 — STUDY OF RELIGION

Every Eduqas religion option is organised around four themes. The details differ, but the following revision structure should be preserved for each.

OPTION A — CHRISTIANITY

Theme 1 — Religious Figures and Sacred Texts

Jesus

Key issues:

• birth narratives;
• Jesus as Messiah;
• divinity/humanity;
• resurrection;
• role as moral teacher and saviour.

Bible

Authority debates:

• literal inspiration;
• non-literal inspiration;
• historical-critical interpretation.

Scholarly tension: whether biblical authority is absolute or contextual.

Theme 2 — Religious Concepts and Religious Life

Trinity

One God, three persons:

• Father;
• Son;
• Holy Spirit.

Atonement

Models:

• substitution;
• sacrifice;
• victory;
• moral example.

Salvation

Debate:

• faith;
• grace;
• works.

Catholic and Protestant emphases differ.

Theme 3 — Social and Historical Developments

Topics include development of Christian thought in response to:

• secularisation;
• science;
• pluralism;
• gender;
• social change.

Religious Pluralism

Exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism.

Liberation Theology

Christian thought can challenge oppression.

Theme 4 — Practices and Identity

• baptism;
• Eucharist;
• prayer;
• worship;
• festivals;
• community.

Practice expresses theological identity.

OPTION B — ISLAM

Theme 1

• Muhammad;
• Qur'an;
• revelation;
• hadith;
• authority.

Qur'an

Revealed word of Allah in Arabic. Translation is interpretation.

Muhammad

Seal of prophets and model through Sunnah.

Theme 2

Tawhid

Absolute unity of Allah.

Prophethood

Line from earlier prophets to Muhammad.

Afterlife

• judgement;
• Jannah;
• Jahannam.

Shari'ah

Moral and legal framework derived through sources and interpretation.

Theme 3

Developments include:

• Sunni/Shi'a;
• reform;
• modernism;
• fundamentalism;
• gender debates;
• Islam and secular modernity.

A* answers distinguish:

• traditionalist;
• reformist;
• modernist readings.

Theme 4

Identity shaped by:

• Five Pillars;
• prayer;
• fasting;
• Hajj;
• zakat;
• ummah;
• dress and community practice.

OPTION C — JUDAISM

Theme 1

• Abraham/Moses;
• covenant;
• Torah;
• Tenakh;
• Talmud;
• rabbinic authority.

Torah

Central revelation and basis of mitzvot.

Orthodox/Reform approaches differ over origin and binding authority.

Theme 2

God

Strict monotheism. Covenantal relationship.

Mitzvot

Commandments shape sanctified daily life.

Messiah

Views differ:

• personal Messiah;
• Messianic age;
• human responsibility for tikkun olam.

Theme 3

Developments:

• Holocaust theology;
• Zionism;
• modern Jewish identity;
• feminism;
• secularisation.

Holocaust

Challenges classical ideas of:

• providence;
• covenant;
• divine justice.

Theme 4

Identity:

• Shabbat;
• kosher practice;
• synagogue;
• festivals;
• lifecycle rites;
• prayer.

OPTION D — BUDDHISM

Theme 1

Buddha

Life of Siddhartha Gautama:

• renunciation;
• enlightenment;
• teaching.

Authority based on awakening rather than divine revelation.

Texts

• Pali Canon;
• Mahayana sutras.

Theme 2

Four Noble Truths

1. dukkha;
2. craving;
3. cessation;
4. Eightfold Path.

Three Marks

• dukkha;
• anicca;
• anatta.

Nirvana

End of craving/ignorance and liberation from samsara.

Theravada / Mahayana

Arhat vs bodhisattva emphasis.

Theme 3

Developments:

• differing schools;
• secular Buddhism;
• engaged Buddhism;
• Buddhism and science;
• gender reform.

Theme 4

Identity:

• meditation;
• monastic life;
• lay practice;
• festivals;
• precepts;
• dana.

OPTION E — HINDUISM

Theme 1

Sacred texts:

• Vedas;
• Upanishads;
• Bhagavad Gita;
• Ramayana.

Authorities:

• gurus;
• tradition.

Theme 2

Brahman

Ultimate reality.

Nirguna

without qualities.

Saguna

with qualities/personal form.

Atman

Self.

Samsara / Karma / Moksha

Cycle of rebirth shaped by karma; liberation is ultimate goal.

Dharma

Duty/order appropriate to person and life stage.

Theme 3

Developments:

• reform movements;
• caste debates;
• gender;
• Hindu nationalism;
• migration/globalisation.

Theme 4

Identity:

• puja;
• darshan;
• festivals;
• pilgrimage;
• yoga;
• family/community practice.

OPTION F — SIKHISM

Theme 1

Guru Nanak

Founder and central teacher.

Core teaching:

• one God;
• equality;
• devotion;
• rejection of empty ritual.

Gurus and Guru Granth Sahib

Authority transfers from human Gurus to scripture and community tradition.

Theme 2

God

One, formless, timeless, creator.

Naam

Divine name/presence.

Hukam

Divine order.

Liberation

Through:

• remembrance of God;
• grace;
• ethical living.

Theme 3

Developments include:

• Khalsa;
• identity in diaspora;
• equality and caste tensions;
• interfaith relations;
• modern ethical issues.

Theme 4

Khalsa Identity

Five Ks:

• Kesh;
• Kangha;
• Kara;
• Kachera;
• Kirpan.

Rahit Maryada

Code shaping belief/practice and Sikh identity.

Naam Japo

Meditative remembrance of divine name.

Bioethics

Eduqas includes Sikh discussion of assisted reproduction such as IVF and related reproductive technologies.

EDUQAS AO1 / AO2 TECHNIQUE

Eduqas strongly rewards both detailed knowledge and sustained evaluation.

AO1

Use:

• precise scholar;
• exact concept;
• development of reasoning;
• relevant religious examples;
• internal diversity.

AO2

A strong paragraph:

1. states a clear evaluative claim;
2. gives reason;
3. uses scholar/evidence;
4. considers counterargument;
5. returns to question.

Avoid:

"This is a strength because it is good."

Use:

"This strengthens Natural Law for religious believers because its moral rules are grounded in a coherent teleology linking human nature to divine purpose. However, the same dependence on a fixed telos reduces persuasiveness for non-theists."

EDUQAS EXAM STRATEGY

Each component draws questions from any area of its specification.

Knowledge Preparation

For each subtopic know:

• definition;
• scholar;
• reasoning;
• example;
• challenge;
• response.

Evaluation Preparation

For every debate prepare:

• argument for;
• argument against;
• scholar comparison;
• final criterion for judgement.

Conclusion

Do not merely repeat.

Use:

“The strongest objection is X because…, although this only defeats Y version of the theory rather than the entire argument.”

COMMON LOST MARKS

• treating Eduqas as if it uses AQA's two-paper structure;
• forgetting Component 1 is one religion only;
• writing a generic religion answer with no prescribed scholar or development;
• confusing induction and deduction;
• stating Aquinas' Five Ways when only required parts are relevant;
• saying evolution automatically disproves design;
• treating Augustine and Hick as identical;
• confusing cognitive with meaningful;
• assuming non-cognitive means meaningless;
• saying Wittgenstein "proved religion true";
• Divine Command Theory reduced to "follow the Bible";
• Natural Law confused with legal law;
• Situation Ethics reduced to personal preference;
• Bentham and Mill not distinguished;
• failing to explain higher/lower pleasures;
• determinism described as "someone forces you";
• conflating foreknowledge and causation;
• failing to show diversity within a religion.