OCR Religious Studies A Level

My daughter has just turned six. Like any six year old, she absorbs stories everyday, not only through the books we read her, but through the cartoons and films she watches. We also went to see Peter Pan at the theatre this Christmas. Stories surround us, especially when we are young. Stories speak to us about our concerns, and they do the vital job of forming the imagination of children. In fact, they do more than this, through the currency of symbol, they initiate a child into a culture, by implicitly affirming certain values and opposing certain other ones.

In recent years a strange thing seems to have happened to stories and fairy tales. Almost all the modern ‘children’s stories’ have to a greater or lesser degree subverted traditional narratives, and thus conveyed values to children which are radically at odds with what our culture has considered valuable for centuries.

This really hit home this holiday when I was watching a modern animation called ‘Mimi and the Mountain Dragon’ on the BBC with my daughter. I realised with some annoyance that I was sitting through yet another story in which dragons were portrayed as nice, gentle, misunderstood creatures. Now, by this point, this is not a surprising plot twist but a tired old trope. In fact, I asked my daughter if she knew any stories in which the dragons were actually the baddies, and she couldn’t think of any at all. This is worth thinking about for a bit.

Now you might argue that there is no significance to this beyond the fact that in the modern era we are no longer satisfied with the same old stories, and we are seeking the thrill of the new. There is no doubt an element of this. But think about the pre-eminent story of our culture, or at least one of the key ones – the hero myth, in which the slaying of the dragon is the culmination of a quest which exemplifies the virtues of cunning, strength, honour and self-sacrifice. The dragon, the ancient serpent, represents a force of evil as old as time itself. It represents the darkness of cthonic, unregenerated chaos out of which order must be constantly drawn.

Now children once grew up reading stories in which the dragon was a creature of daunting intellect and cunning, a force to be afraid of. Thus we had a chance to decode the more subtle types of dragon in the religious and mythical stories of our culture. For instance, the moral world which we inhabit in the West, and thus the narratives which we have told, have identified the tempting, dangerous and seductive side of evil, the way in which it can cast a glamour, and also the way in which courage and strength are needed to overcome it. Clearly these values are based on our Christian inheritance, the perception of good and evil in this way is part of the tradition of Christian culture.

But if you grow up only ever seeing gentle misunderstood dragons, you’re going to find your Christian inheritance a lot harder to decode. There are very good reasons why the heroes are brave and the dragons are fierce in all the old tales.

But when all the dragons become misunderstood, and the real evil is identified as the villagers (as it is in Mimi and the Mountain Dragon), or more precisely their outdated customs in which they have been taught to hate the dragon, then we are in a totally different world. In this world tradition, custom, virility and honour are all toxic. The only real sin is exclusion. Thus the dragon must be befriended, included, discovered to be harmless.

We now have a generation of children raised on woke fairy tales, in which all the old values are subverted because they come from a world of hierarchy, of patriarchy, of tradition, in short everything which the modern person has been taught to hate and fear. For many people this is absolutely a good thing, but there is also a sizeable chunk of people for whom the ‘traditional values’ like chivalry, temperance, and so on are still worth handing on in stories.

The A Level doesn’t have Environmental Ethics as a topic any more which is a shame, as this is something which has come to the forefront of public consciousness over the past year, and has even penetrated and made an impact on the Catholic Church with the announcement by the Pope that ‘environmental sins’ would be added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Just recently, one of the dioceses of England and Wales, Arundel and Brighton, have brought out a programme designed to implement these developments.

As you can see here with this ‘eco-examen’ (an examination of conscience is something Catholics do before going to confession, to help them pinpoint their sins), some things that are recommended to confess are:

Have I taken any unnecessary flights?

Have I bought clothes that I will not wear frequently enough?

Have I done car-sharing?

Have I thought about animal welfare and sustainability?

Have I bought local organic produce?

Some questions relating to this which to a certain extent impinge on the Liberation topic in the A Level might be:

To what extent can there be a sin against the environment? If the Catholic view is that sin is fundamentally a disruption of a human’s relationship with God, either by directly offending Him, or by breaking a commandment relating to other human beings, then clearly no-one sins directly against the environment, but may sin against other humans if they make irresponsible choices which harm them.

For instance, if I knowingly pour toxic waste on a farmer’s land, clearly I have sinned against my neighbour, not the environment.

But when we get to things like unnecessary flights, how do I determine what impact this will have, and secondly, who gets to decide what is unnecessary? Should I really have refused to go on one or more of the four journeys I made this year, none of which were for work?

To many Catholics, including many priests I have spoken to, the idea of ‘eco-sins’ is derisory. There is no need to define new sins, and even if we do, an eco-sin is too vague to be of use. What factors count in the determination of unnecessary flying? Where does the responsibility lie for these things? Corporations create vast amounts of waste and pollution. Can corporations sin?

Perhaps even more concerning for some is the willingness of the Church to get on board with something so unrelated to its primary mission- the salvation of souls. Pope Leo XIII makes clear in his encyclical Immortale Dei that the proper sphere for these sorts of decisions is at the state level, and the details do not concern the Church:

“The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right. But, inasmuch as each of these two powers has authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the same thing – related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing – might belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both, therefore God, Who foresees all things, and Who is the Author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each in right correlation to the other. …

… There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man. The nature and scope of that connection can be determined only, as We have laid down, by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobleness of their purpose. One of the two has for its proximate and chief object the well-being of this mortal life; the other, the everlasting joys of heaven. Whatever, therefore, in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority. Jesus Christ has Himself given command that what is Caesar’s is to be rendered to Caesar, and that what belongs to God is to be rendered to God.” (Immortale Dei, n. 13, 14)

One criticism aimed at natural law is that it falls foul of the naturalistic fallacy, but as we will see there are good reasons both for doubting the validity of this very term, and that it could be applied to natural law.

John Finnis, in a conversation with Peter Vardy, says that the neo-scholastics were confused by the order in which we come to know nature and the ontological order itself. We understand human nature by understanding human goods, BUT these goods do depend on the way we are. We look to objects, act, capacities and therefore to nature. The failure to make the distinction between these two ways = the naturalistic fallacy.

Vardy says:

“Controversially, Finnis starts with the argument that Aquinas, properly interpreted, was an ethical non-naturalist. He argues that the ‘basic goods’ of natural law appeal directly to reason without any need to make particular observations of nature”

But Finnis is simply noting that Aquinas’ first principles are axiomatic. If they were derived from some prior observations then those observations themselves would require further underpinning.

Thomas Storck says in the post I linked to from here, that:

“Moral goodness is in fact a subset of ontological goodness, a part of ontological goodness applicable only to creatures with intellect and will”

and

“Moral goodness and badness are simply that part of ontological goodness or badness which is more or less subject to our free choice. And because our possession of intellect and will is what specifically distinguishes us from the other animals, who lack those endowments, the goodness or badness which depend upon our intellect and will mark out a human being as good or bad more clearly than any mere ontological deficits, deficits which have absolutely no moral aspect. Thus a bad man is not someone who is blind or lame, but someone who steals or cheats and so on.”

Finally, Phillipa Foot, in her commentary on ‘thick concepts’ argues that some terms such as ‘rude’ ” undermine the is-ought gap: calling something rude is evaluative because it expresses condemnation in the same kind of way as bad and wrong do, but this evaluation can be derived from evaluative description. “

(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal)

In summary, criticisms of natural law which rely on some version of the naturalistic fallacy should be used with care.

There have been a few areas that haven’t come up over the last two years – From the year 1 modules:

Augustine – original Sin and Grace

Death and the Afterlife – Heaven, Hell and Purgatory

Knowledge of God – Natural Theology

Christian Moral Principles – Bible/Agape

The Year 2 modules:

Pluralism

Gender and Society

Liberation and Marx

This makes it rather tough to have any kind of an educated guess as the field is so wide. I would be surprised though, if Pluralism didn’t come up, as that is essentially two topics. Perhaps also a question on Liberation. You could do worse than do some practice questions in these areas anyway. In future posts I will attempt to write some exemplar answers for the three modules.

Ethics is the least easy area to guess at possible questions. Most of the topics in it have already come up. However, situation ethics and utilitarianism are possibilities, as they have come up the least. I would guess perhaps something on the rejection of absolute moral rules by situation ethics, and maybe something on whether it is possible to measure good. In the year 2 Ethics topics, sexual ethics has not come up yet. Therefore a question on whether religious beliefs should have a bearing on sexual morality might come up. You might want to have a go at doing an essay on each of those topics to practise.

Well it’s the last exam and in many ways I believe the trickiest. Development of Christian Thought, especially in year 2, covers a vast area including such topics as secularism, pluralism and its influence on society as well as theology, and feminism’s influence on theology. There is also a topic on Marx and Liberation Theology. These are all areas which most teachers will not have taught before 2 years ago, even if they have studied them before. I found the year 2 DCT to be a genuinely fascinating area to study with my students – our discussions covered so many interesting themes such as gender politics and feminism, Christianity and its relation to our culture and so on. But I have to admit it  is a challenge getting students ready to actually answer questions in these areas.

I will give some question examples which are really not predictions, but just topics that I will explore how to answer questions in.

‘Ruether’s approach to theology does not go far enough to be truly feminist’. Discuss

To what extent is Western culture Christian culture?

‘Universalism is incoherent.’ Discuss

‘Christ is more a teacher of wisdom than a political liberator’ Discuss

Over the next few days I hope to post some answers to these questions.