A-Level Religious Studies

A Level Religious Studies encourages you to develop an appreciation of religious thought, and its impact on individuals, communities, and societies. It allows you to apply a wide range of concepts, interpret, contextualise and analyse the expressions of religion, particularly Christianity.

A Level Religious Studies facilitates enquiry into and evaluations of questions about the purposes and commitments of human life expressed in philosophy, religion and ethics. For example, how can the concept of stewardship influence beliefs about environmental impacts?

Studying A Level Religious Studies at Pershore means you will be taught by two specialist teachers. You would receive personalised feedback and be given extensive custom-made resources and support to help you achieve.

Studying Religious Studies will not only result in you achieving a highly respected qualification but also challenge you to question and explore existential and critical questions. You will learn and develop skills in critical and analytical reasoning and how to write clear and coherent arguments; skills valued at undergraduate study and by employers.

Subject content:

Paper 1: Philosophy of Religion

Paper 2: Religion and Ethics

Paper 4b: Christianity

Video link:

Christianity from Judaism to Constantine: Crash Course World History #11 - YouTube

Specification: Edexcel AS and A level Religious Studies (2016) | Pearson qualifications

Something to get you thinking

The omnipotence paradox is a family of paradoxes that arise with some understandings of the term 'omnipotent'

The Paradox of the Stone

God is all-powerful, or as theologians put it, “omnipotent”; there is nothing that He/She cannot do. This is part of the definition of “God”.

So can God create a stone that is so heavy that h/She cannot lift it? Either He/she can or he can’t.

If God can’t, then he isn’t all-powerful. If God can’t create a stone that he can’t lift, then there is something that he/she can’t do: create the stone.

If God can create a stone that is so heavy that he can’t lift it, though, then he also isn’t all-powerful. If God can create a stone that is so heavy that he can’t lift it, then there’s something that he/she can’t do: lift that stone.

This is the paradox of omnipotence. Many critics of theism have used it to argue that the concept of omnipotence is self-contradictory, that there can be no omnipotent being, and so that God cannot exist. Can you solve it?

Recommended reading:

The Puzzle of Ethics – Peter Vardy

Philosophy of Religion – Peter Cole