Developments in Christian Thought | OCR A-Level Religious Studies (H573)

Developments in Christian Thought

205 questions
12 subtopics
Components 03 to 07: Developments in Religious Thought, one religion of five
Components 03–07

Component 03, one of the five Developments in Religious Thought options.

Augustine on human nature, the afterlife, how God is known, the person of Christ, Christian moral principles and action, and the challenges of pluralism, gender, secularism and Marx.

Sample questions from Developments in Christian Thought

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

The 12 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Augustine on human nature	Recall questions on Augustine's reading of Genesis, life before the Fall, concupiscence and the transmission of original sin, the divided will, the two cities and the state, unmerited grace and the summum bonum, Pelagius, and whether Augustine's account is pessimistic, mistaken, or usable alongside evolution.	20
Death and the afterlife	Recall questions on heaven, hell and purgatory understood literally, as states and symbolically, Catholic teaching on purgatory, limited election, unlimited election and universalism, the parable of the sheep and the goats, judgement at death or at the end of time, and whether hell is eternal or morally harmful.	17
Knowledge of God's existence	Recall questions on natural and revealed knowledge of God, the image of God, beauty, goodness and the order of nature, faith and grace, Jesus Christ, the Bible and the Church, whether God can be known by reason alone, the effect of the Fall, and why some Christians distrust arguments for God.	18
The person of Jesus Christ	Recall questions on Jesus as Son of God, teacher of wisdom and liberator, walking on the water, the man born blind, the resurrection, the prodigal son, the woman with the haemorrhage, the good Samaritan, his challenge to religious and political authority, and whether he believed he was divine.	19
Christian moral principles	Recall questions on why a single Christian ethic is hard to state, the Bible as the only authority, the Bible, Church and reason together, love as the only principle and agape, the criticisms of each approach, whether Christian ethics is distinctive, personal or communal, and grace and moral failure.	14
Christian moral action: Dietrich Bonhoeffer	Recall questions on Bonhoeffer's life, the Confessing Church and Finkenwalde, cheap and costly grace, duty to God and to the state, three responses to an unjust state, civil disobedience and the plot against Hitler, ethics as action, the Church for others, and his relevance today.	18
Religious pluralism and theology	Recall questions on the theology of religions, exclusivism, inclusivism and the anonymous Christian, pluralism and the criticisms of each, whether a loving God could refuse salvation, whether a good life is enough to be saved, and whether the three positions are genuinely distinct.	14
Religious pluralism and society	Recall questions on multi-faith Britain, the responses of the Catholic Church in Redemptoris Missio and the Church of England in Sharing the Gospel of Salvation, inter-faith dialogue and its aims, the scriptural reasoning movement, social cohesion, and whether Christians should seek to convert others.	14
Gender and society	Recall questions on changing views of gender roles, the household code in Ephesians, Mulieris Dignitatem and complementarity, Christian responses to changing family life and family forms, motherhood and parenthood, secular gender equality, and whether the Church should be countercultural on gender.	14
Gender and theology: Ruether and Daly	Recall questions on Ruether on the maleness of Christ, God as female Wisdom and Jesus as Wisdom made flesh, Daly on male language for God, the unholy trinity and her alternative to Christian worship, how the two differ, criticisms of each, and whether Christianity is essentially sexist.	19
The challenge of secularism	Recall questions on secularism and secularisation, Freud on religion as illusion and God as a father-figure, Dawkins' case against belief and on the harm of religion, Christian replies to both, secular humanist views on public life, education and government, and Christianity's place in society's values.	18
Liberation theology and Marx	Recall questions on the origins of liberation theology, Marx on alienation, exploitation and religion, structural sin, its use of Marxist analysis, the preferential option for the poor, orthopraxis, its reading of the Bible, the Vatican's 1984 criticisms, and whether it reduces salvation to politics.	20

Developments in Christian Thought is 205 of the 1,584 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

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.