Cameroon GCE A-Level Religious Studies cheat sheet

Exegesis draws meaning from a text through its original language, genre, historical setting and literary context; eisegesis reads a preconceived meaning into the text.

The four senses of Scripture in classical Christian interpretation: literal (plain sense), allegorical (what to believe), moral/tropological (how to act), anagogical (hope of the end).

Source criticism identifies underlying documents behind a text; the classic Pentateuchal sources are labelled Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D) and Priestly (P).

Form criticism classifies small oral units (psalms of lament, pronouncement stories, parables, miracle stories) by their setting in life (Sitz im Leben).

Redaction criticism studies how an editor arranged and shaped sources to express a theological purpose, e.g. Matthew's fulfilment quotations or Luke's concern for the poor.

Textual criticism compares manuscripts to reconstruct the earliest reading; the Masoretic Text underlies most Old Testament translations, while the Septuagint (Greek) was used by New Testament writers.

Synoptic problem: Matthew, Mark and Luke share material; the Two-Source hypothesis posits Markan priority plus a lost sayings source Q, while the Four-Source (Griesbach) alternative favours Matthew first.

Prophetic call narratives typically follow a pattern: divine confrontation, objection, reassurance and sign (compare Moses in Exodus 3-4 and Isaiah 6).

Pauline letters are dated by internal evidence and Acts; undisputed letters include Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon.

Classical theism holds God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, eternal, personal and creator; pantheism identifies God with the universe, panentheism places the world within God.

Deism holds a creator who does not intervene; theism affirms ongoing providence and action in history.

General revelation is knowledge of God available through nature and conscience (Psalm 19, Romans 1); special revelation is through Scripture, prophets and, for Christians, Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2).

Muslim theology distinguishes tawhid (absolute oneness of God) from shirk (associating partners with God), and describes God's attributes (sifat) as revealed in the Qur'an.

African traditional religion typically conceives a supreme Being under names such as Nyame, Chukwu or Nzambi, approached through ancestors and lesser spirits; Mbiti's phrase is 'living dead' for ancestors.

Agnosticism suspends judgement on God's existence; atheism denies it; fideism holds that belief rests on faith rather than reason.

Religious language debates: univocal language means the same of God and creatures, equivocal means entirely different, analogical means partly similar and partly different.

Worship forms include sacrifice, prayer, pilgrimage, fasting and festival; in Islam salat is fixed daily prayer, zakat is almsgiving and hajj is pilgrimage to Mecca.

Myth in religious studies denotes a sacred narrative conveying meaning, not a claim that the story is false.

Ontological argument (Anselm): God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived; if God exists only in the mind, a greater being could be conceived, so God must exist in reality. Gaunilo's island and Kant's objection that existence is not a predicate reply to it.

Cosmological argument (Aquinas' first three ways): motion, causation and contingency require a first mover, first cause and necessary being.

Teleological argument (Paley's watch): apparent design implies a designer; Hume and Darwinian evolution supply the standard objections.

Moral argument (Kant, Newman): the existence of objective moral obligation or conscience points to a moral lawgiver.

Problem of evil: logical form (Mackie) claims evil is incompatible with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God; evidential form claims evil makes belief unreasonable.

Responses to evil: Augustinian free-will defence, Irenaean soul-making (Hick), theodicy of natural law, process theology limiting God's power, and the Muslim response of testing (bala).

Religious experience types (Schleiermacher, Otto, James): numinous, mystical, conversion and corporate; verification tests include ineffability, noetic quality, transience and passivity (James, Stace).

Miracles: Hume defines a miracle as a violation of a law of nature and argues evidence for it can never outweigh the uniform testimony of natural law; Swinburne and Ward defend miracles as evidence of God's action.

Life after death positions: dualism (soul survives), resurrection of the body (Christian), reincarnation (Hindu, Buddhist samsara), and annihilationism; Parfit's reductionism questions personal identity after death.

Deontology judges acts by duty and rules; Kant's categorical imperative requires acting only on maxims that could become universal law, and treating persons as ends, never merely means.

Utilitarianism judges acts by consequences; Bentham's hedonic calculus and Mill's greatest happiness principle differ on quality of pleasures, and act versus rule utilitarianism differ on whether rules or individual acts are assessed.

Natural law (Aquinas) derives moral norms from human purpose and reason; the principle of double effect permits an unintended bad consequence when the act, intention and proportionality conditions hold.

Virtue ethics (Aristotle) centres on eudaimonia and the golden mean; Christian virtue ethics adds faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13).

Situation ethics (Joseph Fletcher) is a consequentialist, person-centred approach using agape with six working principles including pragmatism, relativism and personalism.

Conscience theories: Aquinas' synderesis and conscientia, Butler's moral faculty, Freud's superego, and the social formation view that conscience is educated by community.

Free will positions: hard determinism denies free will, libertarianism affirms it, compatibilism reconciles freedom with causal determinism; theodicy links free will to moral evil.

Applied ethics topics: abortion (sanctity of life versus autonomy), euthanasia (ordinary versus extraordinary means), capital punishment (retributive versus reformative aims), war (just war criteria of jus ad bellum and jus in bello).

Islamic ethics derives norms from the Qur'an and sunna through ijtihad, qiyas (analogy) and ijma (consensus), classifying acts as obligatory, recommended, neutral, disapproved or forbidden.

Christianity: one God in three persons (Trinity); the person and work of Christ defined at Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451); salvation themes of atonement, grace and justification by faith.

Christian sacraments: baptism and Eucharist are generally recognised; Catholic and Orthodox traditions add confirmation, penance, ordination, marriage and anointing.

Church history landmarks: the Reformation (1517), the East-West Schism (1054) and the missionary expansion into Africa from the nineteenth century.

Islam: five pillars are shahada, salat, zakat, sawm and hajj; core beliefs are tawhid, prophethood and the Last Day; the Qur'an is the revealed word and the hadith record the Prophet's sayings.

Sunni and Shia division stems from the succession dispute after Muhammad; Shia hold to the imamate of Ali's line, Sunni to the caliphate through consensus.

African traditional religion: belief in a supreme Being, veneration of ancestors as mediators, divination, secret societies, initiation rites and communal ethics expressed in proverbs.

Encounter and interaction: missionary Christianity and Islam have reshaped African practice, producing independent African churches (e.g. Aladura, Zionist) and African-initiated Islam, with ongoing dialogue over inculturation.

Mbiti and Idowu argue African traditional religion is monotheistic in substance; scholars such as Wiredu and Gyekye debate the role of ancestors and communal personhood in African thought.

Religion and science: conflict (creationism versus evolution), independence (Gould's non-overlapping magisteria) and dialogue models (Polkinghorne, Barbour's typology).

Religion and politics: secularisation thesis (Weber, Wilson, Berger) predicts decline; post-secular accounts (Casanova, Habermas) note public religion's persistence; liberation theology links faith to social justice.

Pluralism: exclusivism holds one religion is uniquely true; inclusivism holds salvation is available through other traditions; pluralism (Hick, Smith) sees all religions as responses to the Real.

Gender: feminist theology (Ruether, Fiorenza) critiques patriarchal imagery and texts; Islamic feminism reinterprets Qur'anic verses on women; African women's theology addresses land and family.

Development: liberation theology's preferential option for the poor, Christian social teaching (Rerum Novarum, 1891), Islamic finance (riba prohibition, zakat) and African theology of community development.

Religion and society: Durkheim sees religion as social cohesion; Marx calls it the opium of the people; Weber links Protestant ethics to the spirit of capitalism.

Religious freedom and law: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 18) protects belief; states balance religious practice against public order and secular law.

Media and globalisation: televangelism, digital religion and transnational movements (Pentecostalism, Salafi reform) reshape religious identity and authority.

Exegesis draws meaning from a text through its original language, genre, historical setting and literary context; eisegesis reads a preconceived meaning into the text.

The four senses of Scripture in classical Christian interpretation: literal (plain sense), allegorical (what to believe), moral/tropological (how to act), anagogical (hope of the end).

Source criticism identifies underlying documents behind a text; the classic Pentateuchal sources are labelled Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D) and Priestly (P).

Form criticism classifies small oral units (psalms of lament, pronouncement stories, parables, miracle stories) by their setting in life (Sitz im Leben).

Redaction criticism studies how an editor arranged and shaped sources to express a theological purpose, e.g. Matthew's fulfilment quotations or Luke's concern for the poor.

Textual criticism compares manuscripts to reconstruct the earliest reading; the Masoretic Text underlies most Old Testament translations, while the Septuagint (Greek) was used by New Testament writers.

Synoptic problem: Matthew, Mark and Luke share material; the Two-Source hypothesis posits Markan priority plus a lost sayings source Q, while the Four-Source (Griesbach) alternative favours Matthew first.

Prophetic call narratives typically follow a pattern: divine confrontation, objection, reassurance and sign (compare Moses in Exodus 3-4 and Isaiah 6).

Pauline letters are dated by internal evidence and Acts; undisputed letters include Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon.

Classical theism holds God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, eternal, personal and creator; pantheism identifies God with the universe, panentheism places the world within God.

Deism holds a creator who does not intervene; theism affirms ongoing providence and action in history.

General revelation is knowledge of God available through nature and conscience (Psalm 19, Romans 1); special revelation is through Scripture, prophets and, for Christians, Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2).

Muslim theology distinguishes tawhid (absolute oneness of God) from shirk (associating partners with God), and describes God's attributes (sifat) as revealed in the Qur'an.

African traditional religion typically conceives a supreme Being under names such as Nyame, Chukwu or Nzambi, approached through ancestors and lesser spirits; Mbiti's phrase is 'living dead' for ancestors.

Agnosticism suspends judgement on God's existence; atheism denies it; fideism holds that belief rests on faith rather than reason.

Religious language debates: univocal language means the same of God and creatures, equivocal means entirely different, analogical means partly similar and partly different.

Worship forms include sacrifice, prayer, pilgrimage, fasting and festival; in Islam salat is fixed daily prayer, zakat is almsgiving and hajj is pilgrimage to Mecca.

Myth in religious studies denotes a sacred narrative conveying meaning, not a claim that the story is false.

Ontological argument (Anselm): God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived; if God exists only in the mind, a greater being could be conceived, so God must exist in reality. Gaunilo's island and Kant's objection that existence is not a predicate reply to it.

Cosmological argument (Aquinas' first three ways): motion, causation and contingency require a first mover, first cause and necessary being.

Teleological argument (Paley's watch): apparent design implies a designer; Hume and Darwinian evolution supply the standard objections.

Moral argument (Kant, Newman): the existence of objective moral obligation or conscience points to a moral lawgiver.

Problem of evil: logical form (Mackie) claims evil is incompatible with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God; evidential form claims evil makes belief unreasonable.

Responses to evil: Augustinian free-will defence, Irenaean soul-making (Hick), theodicy of natural law, process theology limiting God's power, and the Muslim response of testing (bala).

Religious experience types (Schleiermacher, Otto, James): numinous, mystical, conversion and corporate; verification tests include ineffability, noetic quality, transience and passivity (James, Stace).

Miracles: Hume defines a miracle as a violation of a law of nature and argues evidence for it can never outweigh the uniform testimony of natural law; Swinburne and Ward defend miracles as evidence of God's action.

Life after death positions: dualism (soul survives), resurrection of the body (Christian), reincarnation (Hindu, Buddhist samsara), and annihilationism; Parfit's reductionism questions personal identity after death.

Deontology judges acts by duty and rules; Kant's categorical imperative requires acting only on maxims that could become universal law, and treating persons as ends, never merely means.

Utilitarianism judges acts by consequences; Bentham's hedonic calculus and Mill's greatest happiness principle differ on quality of pleasures, and act versus rule utilitarianism differ on whether rules or individual acts are assessed.

Natural law (Aquinas) derives moral norms from human purpose and reason; the principle of double effect permits an unintended bad consequence when the act, intention and proportionality conditions hold.

Virtue ethics (Aristotle) centres on eudaimonia and the golden mean; Christian virtue ethics adds faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13).

Situation ethics (Joseph Fletcher) is a consequentialist, person-centred approach using agape with six working principles including pragmatism, relativism and personalism.

Conscience theories: Aquinas' synderesis and conscientia, Butler's moral faculty, Freud's superego, and the social formation view that conscience is educated by community.

Free will positions: hard determinism denies free will, libertarianism affirms it, compatibilism reconciles freedom with causal determinism; theodicy links free will to moral evil.

Applied ethics topics: abortion (sanctity of life versus autonomy), euthanasia (ordinary versus extraordinary means), capital punishment (retributive versus reformative aims), war (just war criteria of jus ad bellum and jus in bello).

Islamic ethics derives norms from the Qur'an and sunna through ijtihad, qiyas (analogy) and ijma (consensus), classifying acts as obligatory, recommended, neutral, disapproved or forbidden.

Christianity: one God in three persons (Trinity); the person and work of Christ defined at Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451); salvation themes of atonement, grace and justification by faith.

Christian sacraments: baptism and Eucharist are generally recognised; Catholic and Orthodox traditions add confirmation, penance, ordination, marriage and anointing.

Church history landmarks: the Reformation (1517), the East-West Schism (1054) and the missionary expansion into Africa from the nineteenth century.

Islam: five pillars are shahada, salat, zakat, sawm and hajj; core beliefs are tawhid, prophethood and the Last Day; the Qur'an is the revealed word and the hadith record the Prophet's sayings.

Sunni and Shia division stems from the succession dispute after Muhammad; Shia hold to the imamate of Ali's line, Sunni to the caliphate through consensus.

African traditional religion: belief in a supreme Being, veneration of ancestors as mediators, divination, secret societies, initiation rites and communal ethics expressed in proverbs.

Encounter and interaction: missionary Christianity and Islam have reshaped African practice, producing independent African churches (e.g. Aladura, Zionist) and African-initiated Islam, with ongoing dialogue over inculturation.

Mbiti and Idowu argue African traditional religion is monotheistic in substance; scholars such as Wiredu and Gyekye debate the role of ancestors and communal personhood in African thought.

Religion and science: conflict (creationism versus evolution), independence (Gould's non-overlapping magisteria) and dialogue models (Polkinghorne, Barbour's typology).

Religion and politics: secularisation thesis (Weber, Wilson, Berger) predicts decline; post-secular accounts (Casanova, Habermas) note public religion's persistence; liberation theology links faith to social justice.

Pluralism: exclusivism holds one religion is uniquely true; inclusivism holds salvation is available through other traditions; pluralism (Hick, Smith) sees all religions as responses to the Real.

Gender: feminist theology (Ruether, Fiorenza) critiques patriarchal imagery and texts; Islamic feminism reinterprets Qur'anic verses on women; African women's theology addresses land and family.

Development: liberation theology's preferential option for the poor, Christian social teaching (Rerum Novarum, 1891), Islamic finance (riba prohibition, zakat) and African theology of community development.

Religion and society: Durkheim sees religion as social cohesion; Marx calls it the opium of the people; Weber links Protestant ethics to the spirit of capitalism.

Religious freedom and law: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 18) protects belief; states balance religious practice against public order and secular law.

Media and globalisation: televangelism, digital religion and transnational movements (Pentecostalism, Salafi reform) reshape religious identity and authority.