2 Aristotle

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is the difference between Plato’s and Aristotle’s use of the word ‘Form’?

2 What is the connection between the final cause and the Prime Mover?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Aristotle’s Four Causes;
• Necessary being; and
• Prime Mover.

3 Soul, mind and body

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Which are more coherent: arguments in favour of dualism or monism?

2 What is the appeal of materialism?

3 Is replica theory more persuasive than belief in a soul?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Consciousness;
• Dualism;
• Materialism;
• Replica theory; and
• Soul.

4 Arguments based on observation

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Richard Dawkins entitled a book The Blind Watchmaker. What point do you think he was making?

2 Outline Paley’s analogy of the watch.

3 In what way is Aquinas’s teleological argument different from Paley’s?

4 Can you explain the difference between a teleological argument based on order and a teleological argument based on regularity?

5 Read the sections on Paley and Hume again. Which argument is stronger?

6 Review the information in this chapter about infinite regression. Do you think that the idea of infinite regression is a serious weakness in Aquinas’s argument or just philosophical speculation? Justify your answer with reasons.

7 Outline the main steps of Ways 1 to 3.

8 Do Hume and Mackie’s criticisms fatally wound the cosmological argument?

9 The philosopher Anthony Kenny once used the phrase ‘the God of the Philosophers’ to refer to the way God is spoken of in arguments such as the five ways. What do you think he meant?

10 Is Aquinas’s God of the five ways the same as the Christian God? Justify your answer with reasons.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• First efficient cause;
• Infinite regression;
• Natural selection;
• Necessity and contingency;
• Paley’s watch analogy;
• Three reasons why Hume rejects Paley’s watch analogy; and
• Variation.

5 Arguments based on reason (the ontological argument)

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Briefly explain Gaunilo’s criticism of the ontological argument.

2 What are the two most serious weaknesses of the ontological argument in your opinion? Justify your choice.

3 Summarise Anselm’s and Descartes’s version of the ontological argument.

4 What is the difference between an analytic and a synthetic statement? Explain with reference to an example.

5 Explain what Kant means when he says existence is not a predicate.

6 Descartes says that existence is a perfection of God. What does this mean?

6 Religious experience

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Outline William James’s understanding of religious experience.

2 Why would a follower of Freud or Marx reject religious experience as evidence of God’s existence?

3 If a friend told you he or she had seen God, how would you react to and assess what this friend told you?

4 Do you think religious experiences are veridical? Explain your answer with reasons.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Authority;
• Indirect and direct experiences;
• Ineffable;
• Noetic;
• Passive;
• The principle of credulity;
• The principle of testimony; and
• Transient

7 The Problem of evil

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 List the positive and negative features of Augustine’s and Irenaeus’s theodicies. Do you think either theodicy is adequate? Justify your answer with reasons.

2 Aristotle famously stated that ‘we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts’ (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics). How could this support the ideas of Christian theodicies?

3 Would you say that ‘the existence of evil’ is a mystery? If it is a mystery, can ‘the existence of evil’ be used as an argument against the existence of God?

4 Desmond Tutu wrote in 1977 about South Africa under the apartheid system of discrimination against black people:

[T]he burning question is not ‘Why is there suffering and evil in the universe of a good God?’ but the more immediately pressing one of ‘Why do we suffer so?’ ‘Why does suffering seem to single out us blacks to be the victims of a racism gone mad?’ (Tutu, African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians; emphasis added)

(a) Do you agree with Desmond Tutu about what the key question is (italics)?

(b) Do the ideas of the Irenaean and Augustinian theodicies answer Desmond Tutu’s question?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Epistemic distance;
• Privation;
• The Fall; and
• Theodicy.

8 What is ethics?

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is the ‘Is-ought fallacy’?

2 Name the three areas of ethics.

3 Explain what is meant by ‘cultural relativism’.

9 Moral absolutism and moral relativism

1 In ten bullet points explain what is meant by cultural relativism, including the difference between the diversity thesis and the dependency thesis.

2 List the main weaknesses of relativism.

3 What is the historical background of situation ethics?

4 List the principles on which situation ethics is based.

5 List the strengths of absolutism.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Consequentialism;
• Moral absolutism;
• Moral relativism; and
• Moral objectivism.

10 Natural moral law

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Where did natural law come from?

2 What did Aquinas see as the purpose of human beings?

3 How do we discover the primary and secondary precepts and what are they?

4 Make a chart of the strengths and weaknesses of natural law.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the meaning of the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Apparent good;
• Deontological ethics;
• Intrinsically good/bad;
• Primary precepts; and
• Secondary precepts.

11 Situation ethics

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is agape?

2 What are Fletcher’s Six Propositions?

3 Do you think situation ethics is really a Christian ethical theory? Explain your answer.

4 Make a chart of the strengths and weaknesses of natural law.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the meaning of the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Antinomalism;
• Personalism;
• Positivism;
• Pragmatism; and
• Relativism

12 Kantian ethics

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What did Kant mean by ‘good will’?

2 Why is duty important to Kant?

3 Spider diagram or mind map the categorical imperative, with examples.

4 Make a chart of the strengths and weaknesses of Kantian ethics.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following terms without looking at your books and notes:

• Duty;
• Good will;
• Maxim;
• The categorical imperative;
• The hypothetical imperative;
• The kingdom of ends;
• The summum bonum; and
• Universalisability.

13 Utilitarianism

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Explain the main principle of utilitarianism.

2 Explain the utilitarianism of Bentham.

3 Explain the utilitarianism of Mill.

4 Explain the differences between act and rule utilitarianism.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following key ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Act utilitarianism;
• Consequentialist;
• Preference utilitarianism;
• Rule utilitarianism; and

14 Euthanasia

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 (a) Explain the link between euthanasia and the sanctity of life.

(b) Explain the link between euthanasia and the quality of life.

2 What is the difference between killing and letting die? Does it matter?

3 What are QALYs?

4 Make a chart applying the different ethical theories to euthanasia.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Active euthanasia;
• Autonomy;
• Involuntary euthanasia;
• Passive euthanasia;
• Slippery slope; and
• Voluntary euthanasia.

15 Business ethics

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Explain how consumers can influence business ethics.

2 Why is environmental responsibility a good business strategy?

3 List the benefits and the problems of ethics for businesses.

4 List the strengths and weaknesses of a utilitarian approach to business ethics.

5 How does Kant think business can help world peace?

16 Introduction

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is the Apocrypha?

2 List some of the problems about the birth of Jesus found in the Gospels.

3 What is Gnosticism?

4 Explain two of the possible solutions to the ‘synoptic problem’.

17 Augustine’s teaching on human nature

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What was the teaching of Donatism?

2 What was the teaching of Pelagianism?

3 What did Augustine mean by ‘privation’?

4 What do you think are the main strengths and weaknesses of Augustine’s teachings?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the meaning of the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Concupiscence;
• Continence;
• Enlightenment;
• Manichaeism;
• Neo-Platonism;
• Postlapsarian;
• Privation and lack; and
• Summum bonum.

18 Death and the afterlife

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is the appeal of materialism?

2 Is replica theory more persuasive than belief in a soul?

3 Which argument against life after death is the strongest in your opinion? Justify your answer.

4 Outline Russell’s reasons for rejecting belief in life after death. Is his argument persuasive?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

1 Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Divine election;
• Materialism;
• Replica theory;
• Resurrection; and
• Universalism.

19 Knowledge of God’s existence

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is the main argument of natural theology?

2 What is the main argument of revealed theology?

3 Which of these types of theologies do you think is stronger? Justify your answer.

4 Outline how people can have knowledge of God’s existence through Jesus Christ.

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Innate;
• Magisterium;
• Numinous experience;
• Process theology;
• Revelation; and
• Teleological.

20 The person of Jesus Christ

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What were the purposes of the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople?

2 How did the life of the disciples begin to change after Pentecost?

3 What did Bultmann mean by demythologising the New Testament?

4 What different types of Christology can you name and explain?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Arianism;
• Homoousion;
• Hypostatic union;
• Parousia; and
• Zealot.

21 Christian moral principles

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 What is the principle of heteronomous Christian ethics?

2 What is the principle of theonomous Christian ethics?

3 Which of these principles do you think most convincing? Justify your answer.

4 What is the connection between conscience and Christian religious ethics?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Agape;
• Divine command theory;
• Magisterium; and
• Natural law.

22 Christian moral action

Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:

1 Who founded the Confessing Church?

2 What did Bonhoeffer mean by ‘religionless Christianity’?

3 Who was Karl Barth?

4 What do you think are the main strengths and weaknesses of Bonhoeffer’s teachings?

Terminology

Do you know your terminology?

Try to explain the meaning of the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:

• Aryan paragraph;
• Christology;
• Civil disobedience;
• Grace;
• Secular pacifism;
• Systematic theology; and
• Tyrannicide.