OCR A-Level Religious Studies Active Recall Guide (H573)
OCR · A-Level
OCR A-Level Religious Studies Active Recall Guide
Every topic of specification H573 written as exam-style questions with the answers printed after them. 1,584 questions across 7 topics and 89 subtopics, including all five religions for the third component so the guide fits whichever one you study.
- OCR
- A-Level
- Specification H573
- 1,584 questions
Guide overview All 7 topics Sample questions Papers and weighting Look inside Questions and answers
What the exam asks of you
OCR A-Level Religious Studies is three equally weighted components, each a two-hour paper of 120 marks on which you answer three of four essay questions worth 40 marks each. Philosophy of Religion and Religion and Ethics are compulsory. The third is Developments in Religious Thought, studied through one religion.
Every mark on this specification comes from a 40-mark essay, and those essays are marked on named scholars, precise arguments and the ability to set one against another. That is a recall problem first. An essay cannot evaluate an argument it cannot state.
| Paper | Covers | Length | Marks | Weighting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Component 01 Philosophy of Religion |
Ancient philosophical influences, soul, mind and body, arguments for God, religious experience, evil, the nature of God and religious language Four essay questions, of which you answer three, each worth 40 marks Marked by levels of response, crediting the use of scholarly views, academic approaches and sources of wisdom and authority |
2 hours | 120 marks | 33.3% |
|
Component 02 Religion and Ethics |
Normative theories, meta-ethics, conscience, and applied questions on euthanasia, business ethics and sexual ethics Four essay questions, of which you answer three, each worth 40 marks Each essay tests both knowledge and understanding (AO1) and analysis and evaluation (AO2) |
2 hours | 120 marks | 33.3% |
|
Components 03–07 Developments in Religious Thought |
One religion chosen from Christianity (03), Islam (04), Judaism (05), Buddhism (06) and Hinduism (07) Beliefs, sources of authority, practices, and engagement with gender, pluralism and secularism Four essay questions on the religion studied, of which you answer three, each worth 40 marks |
2 hours | 120 marks | 33.3% |
What is in the guide
All 7 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.
-
Aristotle: the four causes and the Prime Mover
Apply Aristotle's four causes to a bronze statue.
Show the answer
The material cause is the bronze. The formal cause is the shape and proportions that make it a statue of that particular figure rather than a lump of metal. The efficient cause is the sculptor and the act of casting. The final cause is the purpose it serves, such as commemorating a hero or adorning a temple. -
Aquinas and the precepts of natural law
Where does human law fit into Aquinas' four tiers, and what is it?
Show the answer
Human law is the actual legislation made by states and rulers: statutes, codes and customs. It should be a working-out of natural law for particular circumstances, filling in details that natural law leaves open, such as which side of the road to drive on. Its authority is derivative, not independent. -
Debate over the Principles and Jewish belief
How do Orthodox and Reform Judaism differ on the authority of the Principles?
Show the answer
Orthodox Judaism treats them as a summary of binding belief, while Reform Judaism regards them as one medieval formulation rather than a test of Jewish identity.
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 Religion245
- Religion and Ethics227
- Developments in Christian Thought205
- Developments in Islamic Thought222
- Developments in Jewish Thought250
- Developments in Buddhist Thought218
- Developments in Hindu Thought217
- What does the word telos mean, and why is it the starting point for natural law?
- How did Aristotle use the idea of telos in his account of nature and the good life?
- How did Aquinas take Aristotle's idea of telos and give it a religious development?
- What is the difference between Aristotle's eudaimonia and Aquinas' account of the human end?
- Why is natural law sometimes called both teleological and deontological?
- Name the four tiers of law in Aquinas' scheme, in order from highest to lowest.
- In Aquinas' four tiers, what is eternal law?
- Within Aquinas' four tiers of law, how is divine law defined and what are its usual examples?
- Within the four tiers, what does Aquinas mean by natural law itself?
- Telos means the end, goal or purpose that something is directed towards. Natural law begins from the claim that everything, including human beings, has a built-in purpose, and that an action is good when it moves a thing towards that purpose and bad when it frustrates it. Morality therefore becomes a question about fulfilling human nature rather than about obeying arbitrary commands.
- Aristotle argued that to explain anything fully you must state its final cause, the end it exists for. An acorn is directed towards becoming an oak, and an eye towards seeing — ends belonging to the things themselves rather than assigned to them by a maker. He applied this to humans: our distinctive capacity is rational activity, so the human telos is eudaimonia, a flourishing life lived in accordance with reason and virtue. Goodness is thus measured against a purpose written into nature.
- Aquinas, writing as a Christian theologian, kept Aristotle's claim that human beings have a natural purpose but placed that purpose within a created order. On his account, God is the author of nature, so the purposes we discover in ourselves are God's design. He also extended the goal beyond this life: our final end is not just earthly flourishing but the beatific vision, perfect union with God, which reason alone cannot deliver.
- Aristotle's eudaimonia is a this-worldly flourishing achieved through the exercise of reason and virtue over a complete life, and it needs no God to make sense of it. Aquinas accepted that as the natural end but held that it is incomplete. For him the supernatural end, seeing God, lies beyond natural human powers and requires grace and revelation, which is why divine law is needed alongside natural law.
- It is teleological because the whole framework rests on purpose: acts are assessed by whether they serve the human telos. It is deontological in practice because the precepts derived from that purpose function as binding rules that hold regardless of the outcome in a particular case. This is why natural law can look absolutist at the level of the primary precepts while still being grounded in an argument about ends.
- Eternal law, divine law, natural law and human law. They form a descending chain: the eternal is God's own ordering of reality, divine law is what God has disclosed in scripture, natural law is the share in that ordering which human reason can work out, and human law is the concrete legislation of particular states.
- Eternal law is, on Aquinas' account, the rational plan by which God creates, orders and governs the whole universe. Because it is God's own mind, no human being grasps it in full; we only ever catch reflections of it. Every lower tier of law derives whatever authority it has from this one.
- Divine law is the portion of God's ordering that Christians hold has been revealed rather than reasoned out, given in scripture. Aquinas points to the commandments given through Moses and to the teaching Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount. Its function is to supply what unaided reason cannot reach and to correct reason where sin has clouded it.
- Natural law is the human being's rational participation in the eternal law. Aquinas held that God has written moral orientation into human nature, so a person of any faith or none can work out its basic requirements by thinking clearly about what human beings are for. This is what makes the theory usable in public argument rather than only inside a believing community.
questions
Scroll sideways to turn through the pages.
Questions students ask first
I only study one religion for the third paper. Is the rest wasted?
No. Components 03 to 07 are Developments in Religious Thought through one religion: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism. Your school picks one.
All five are in the guide because schools pick differently. Work the one you are taught and skip the other four. They are separate topics with their own pages.
Which components are compulsory?
Component 01, Philosophy of Religion, and Component 02, Religion and Ethics. Every student sits both. The third component is the one that varies by religion.
Do I need to name scholars?
Yes, and it is where most marks are lost. An argument attributed to nobody, or attributed to the wrong person, is credited less than the same argument attributed correctly. The guide asks for the scholar, the argument and the standard objection separately.
Everything is essays. How does a question-and-answer guide help?
A 40-mark essay is built from things you either have or do not have: a definition, a named argument, a counter-argument, a scholar, an example. The guide gets those into memory. Structuring them into an essay and doing it three times in two hours is what past papers train.
OCR A-Level Religious Studies Active Recall Guide
Every question paired with its answer, grouped by topic and subtopic, ready to work in three passes.