Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies Active Recall Guide (9RS0)
Edexcel · A-Level
Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies Active Recall Guide
Every paper option of specification 9RS0 written as exam-style questions with the answers printed after them. 1,694 questions across 9 topics and 132 subtopics, including all six religions so the guide fits whichever three papers you sit.
- Edexcel
- A-Level
- Specification 9RS0
- 1,694 questions
Guide overview All 9 topics Sample questions Papers and weighting Look inside Questions and answers
What the exam asks of you
Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies is three papers chosen from four, each 2 hours and 80 marks, a third of the A-level apiece. Paper 1 is Philosophy of Religion, Paper 2 is Religion and Ethics, Paper 3 is New Testament Studies, and Paper 4 is the study of one religion chosen from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.
The board’s one restriction is that New Testament Studies cannot be combined with the Christianity option on Paper 4. Every paper and every religion is in the guide.
| Paper | Covers | Length | Marks | Weighting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Paper 1 Philosophy of Religion |
Arguments for God's existence, evil and suffering, religious language and life after death Two structured questions, a two-part essay on a set extract, and one extended essay Extracts come from the published anthology and are printed in the paper |
2 hours | 80 marks | 33.33% |
|
Paper 2 Religion and Ethics |
Normative ethical theories, meta-ethics, and applied questions from war to medical ethics Two extended-response questions, a two-part essay on a set extract, and one extended essay Rewards the ability to apply a theory to an unfamiliar case |
2 hours | 80 marks | 33.33% |
|
Paper 3 New Testament Studies |
The first-century setting, the Fourth Gospel, interpretation, and the death and resurrection Cannot be entered alongside the Christianity option on Paper 4 Same three-section structure as the other papers |
2 hours | 80 marks | 33.33% |
|
Paper 4 Study of Religion |
One religion chosen from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism Beliefs and teachings, sources of authority, practices, social developments and scholarship Same three-section structure, with extracts drawn from that religion's texts |
2 hours | 80 marks | 33.33% |
What is in the guide
All 9 topics
Every topic has its own page with its subtopics, what it covers and sample questions.
Sample questions
Taken from the guide. Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
-
Life After Death
What is transmigration of souls?
Show the answer
The doctrine that the soul moves between bodies across successive lives, carrying its identity with it. -
Environmental Ethics
Define sustainability and explain why it is an ethical idea and not just an economic one.
Show the answer
Sustainability is meeting present needs without destroying the capacity of future generations to meet theirs. It is ethical because it asks whether people who do not yet exist can make claims on us, and whether present consumption can be justified against future cost. -
The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path
Explain what magga adds to the first three truths.
Show the answer
Magga is the practical answer: the Noble Eightfold Path of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Without it the first three truths would state a problem and a hope with no method between them. -
Debates about Scriptural Authority
What did Dayananda Saraswati argue about scriptural authority?
Show the answer
That only the Vedas are authoritative and later texts and practices that depart from them should be discarded. -
The Six Beliefs of Islam
What are the six articles of faith that Sunni Muslims traditionally list?
Show the answer
Belief that Allah is one; belief in angels; belief in the revealed scriptures; belief in the prophets; belief in the Day of Judgement; and belief in divine decree, qadr. Sunni tradition calls them the pillars of faith, arkan al-iman, and summarises them in a set creedal formula that many Muslims learn by heart. -
Ethical Monotheism
What follows practically from the belief that God alone may be worshipped?
Show the answer
Worship directed anywhere else, whether to images, to other gods or to a human being, counts as idolatry, which Jewish teaching treats as the gravest category of wrongdoing. It also shapes prayer: Jews address God directly, without going through any intermediary figure.
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
-
Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
-
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
-
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Look inside
Questions for a subtopic print together and the answers for that section print after them.
- Philosophy of Religion187
- Religion and Ethics169
- New Testament Studies164
- Buddhism198
- Christianity194
- Hinduism210
- Islam195
- Judaism185
- Sikhism192
- What do Jews and Christians usually mean when they call humanity a steward of creation?
- Is stewardship the same as conservation?
- Give a worked religious position and a worked secular position on the environment.
- How do religious and secular thinkers argue about animal welfare?
- Define sustainability and explain why it is an ethical idea and not just an economic one.
- Why is waste management treated as a moral issue rather than a technical one?
- What makes climate change a hard case for ethics?
- Explain J Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.
- What did A Næss mean by deep ecology?
- That the earth belongs to God and human beings hold it in trust rather than owning it. Reading the Genesis creation accounts this way, Jews and Christians take dominion to mean responsible care for which humanity is answerable to God, not a licence to exploit. Muslims express a similar idea through khalifah, humanity as God's trustee on earth.
- No. Stewardship is a religious account of why humans are accountable for the natural world; conservation is the practical management of habitats, species and resources. A conservationist need hold no theology at all, and stewardship can be argued for on grounds a secular conservationist would reject.
- Religious: Catholic teaching in Laudato Si' (2015) treats care for creation as a moral duty, links environmental damage to injustice against the poor, and criticises a throwaway culture of consumption. Secular: deep ecology holds that non-human life has value in its own right, independent of any use to humans, so the whole biosphere generates obligations. Students may argue from either, or set them against each other.
- Hindus, Buddhists and Jains appeal to ahimsa, non-harming, and many practise vegetarianism; Jewish and Muslim law imposes rules on slaughter that are themselves argued to reduce suffering, though critics dispute this. On the secular side, Peter Singer argues that a being's capacity to suffer is what earns it equal consideration, so ignoring animal pain is speciesism, while Tom Regan grounds protection in the rights of animals as subjects of a life.
- Sustainability is meeting present needs without destroying the capacity of future generations to meet theirs. It is ethical because it asks whether people who do not yet exist can make claims on us, and whether present consumption can be justified against future cost.
- Because how much a society throws away reflects choices about consumption, and because the burden of landfill, incineration and exported plastic falls unequally, often on poorer communities and poorer countries. Religious critics add that treating goods as disposable expresses ingratitude for gifts held in trust.
- Responsibility is diffuse, the harm is delayed, and those who caused least of the problem are frequently most exposed to it. Ordinary ideas of blame and compensation strain, which is why the debate has moved towards climate justice: who owes what to whom across nations and generations.
- Lovelock proposed that the earth's living things, atmosphere, oceans and rocks function as a single self-regulating system that keeps conditions suitable for life. His concern is the stability of that whole system, not the survival of any one species, and in later work such as The Revenge of Gaia he was pessimistic about human damage, arguing that nuclear power was necessary and criticising much green orthodoxy as sentimental.
- Næss distinguished shallow ecology, which protects nature because people need it, from deep ecology, which holds that the flourishing of all life has value in itself. His platform included biospherical egalitarianism, respect for diversity and a call to reduce human population and interference, alongside self-realisation, an enlarged sense of self that identifies with the wider natural world.
questions
Scroll sideways to turn through the pages.
Questions students ask first
Which three papers do I sit?
Three of the four, chosen by your school. Philosophy of Religion and Religion and Ethics are the usual pair, with either New Testament Studies or the Study of Religion as the third.
All four are in the guide, and all six religions for Paper 4, so you work your three and skip the rest.
Can I do New Testament Studies and Christianity?
No. Pearson does not allow New Testament Studies to be combined with the Christianity option on Paper 4, because the content overlaps. Any other combination of three papers is permitted.
What are the extracts?
Each paper includes a two-part essay on a set extract, printed in the paper and drawn from the published anthology or, on Paper 4, from that religion’s texts. The marks are for engaging with the position it states, which means knowing that position before you read it under time.
Do I need to know scholars by name?
Yes. The questions ask for specific positions and the people who held them, and the guide asks for them by name with the argument attached.
Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies Active Recall Guide
Every question paired with its answer, grouped by topic and subtopic, ready to work in three passes.