2025 CCEA A-Level Religious Studies 4610 模擬試題連答案詳解

The Just War tradition provides a structured ethical framework for assessing the morality of warfare, developed within Christian thought from Augustine of Hippo in the fourth and fifth centuries, systematised further by Thomas Aquinas, and refined by later just war theorists into the present day.

The tradition's first major set of criteria, jus ad bellum ('justice in going to war'), governs whether entering a war can be morally justified at all. These criteria typically include: just cause (war must respond to a genuine wrong, such as aggression or the defence of the innocent, rather than mere self-interest); legitimate authority (only a properly constituted political authority, not private individuals or factions, may declare war); right intention (the war must be fought to secure a just peace or right a genuine wrong, not from hatred or a desire for domination); last resort (all reasonable non-violent means of resolving the conflict must first have been exhausted); probability of success (a war with no realistic prospect of achieving its just aims cannot be justified, since it causes suffering with no compensating good); and proportionality of ends (the anticipated good achieved by the war must outweigh the harm it will cause).

Once a war has justly begun, a second set of criteria, jus in bello ('justice in war'), governs how it must be conducted. Discrimination (or non-combatant immunity) requires that combatants and non-combatants be clearly distinguished, with deliberate attacks on civilians prohibited; proportionality of means requires that the force used in any specific military action be proportionate to the military objective being pursued, avoiding excessive or gratuitous destruction.

More recent just war theorists have added a third category, jus post bellum ('justice after war'), addressing the ethical requirements of a just peace settlement: fair and proportionate terms, accountability for war crimes, and support for the reconstruction and stable governance of the defeated party, so that the peace itself does not sow the seeds of future injustice or conflict.

This three-part framework informs Christian ethical thinking about war by offering a considered middle position between two more extreme alternatives: pacifism, which holds that all violence and warfare are incompatible with Christian love and are therefore always wrong, and a purely nationalistic or 'realist' view that treats war simply as an instrument of state interest, unconstrained by moral limits. By setting out clear, checkable criteria, the Just War tradition allows Christians to support the moral legitimacy of some wars (typically defensive wars against clear aggression) while still condemning wars, or specific conduct within wars, that fail to meet its standards — a framework that continues to shape both Christian ethical reflection and much of modern international humanitarian law.

Band-of-response marking (20 marks). Band 1 (1-4): Basic, fragmentary knowledge of Just War theory; weak written communication. Band 2 (5-8): Limited knowledge, perhaps naming some criteria without accurate detail; adequate written communication. Band 3 (9-12): Reasonable, generally accurate account of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, with some reference to specific criteria, though development may be uneven; adequate specialist vocabulary. Band 4 (13-16): Good, accurate knowledge of jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum criteria, with clear explanation of the tradition's Christian origins and purpose; clear organisation. Band 5 (17-20): Comprehensive, precise and well-organised knowledge of all three categories of criteria, using accurate technical vocabulary and demonstrating sophisticated understanding of how the tradition positions Christian ethics between pacifism and unrestrained warfare. Max 20 marks.

Philosophical understandings of the relationship between body and soul divide broadly into dualist and materialist (or physicalist) positions, with Plato providing the classical source for the former and modern materialist theories offering influential critiques of it.

Plato's dualism holds that a person consists of two fundamentally distinct substances: a physical, mortal body, and an immaterial, immortal soul. This view is famously illustrated in Plato's analogy of the cave (in the Republic), where prisoners mistake shadows on a cave wall for reality, and only the philosopher who escapes the cave perceives the true world of the Forms; Plato uses this analogy to suggest that the physical, bodily world of sense experience is a lesser, shadow-like reality compared to the eternal realm the rational soul truly belongs to and can access through reason. On this view, the soul pre-exists the body, is only temporarily housed within it (the body understood almost as a 'prison' or vehicle for the soul), and survives the body's death, since the soul's true nature is akin to the eternal, unchanging Forms rather than to the changing physical world. Plato's dualism proved enormously influential on later Christian thought, shaping a long tradition (developed further by thinkers such as Descartes, who argued mind and body are two genuinely distinct substances, res cogitans and res extensa) in which the soul is understood as the immaterial, essential self that survives bodily death.

Materialist theories directly challenge this dualist picture by denying that there is any distinct, immaterial substance (the soul) separate from the physical body and brain. Materialism (or physicalism) holds that mental states simply are physical states of the brain and nervous system, with no additional immaterial component required to explain consciousness, thought or personality. Epiphenomenalism accepts that mental states exist as real phenomena but holds that they are merely by-products ('epiphenomena') of physical brain processes, possessing no independent causal power of their own to affect the physical world — consciousness, on this view, is like the smoke given off by an engine, a real but causally inert side-effect. Philosophical behaviourism takes a different materialist approach, arguing that talk of 'mental states' should be understood not as referring to any inner substance or process at all, but simply as shorthand for dispositions to behave in certain observable ways under certain conditions. The identity thesis (or type-identity theory) argues most directly against dualism by claiming that specific types of mental state (such as pain) are simply identical to specific types of physical brain state (such as particular patterns of neural firing), not merely correlated with them — mental language and physical language, on this view, describe exactly the same underlying reality.

These materialist positions collectively challenge the coherence of Plato's dualism by questioning whether an immaterial soul, causally interacting with a physical body yet composed of an entirely different kind of substance, is a philosophically coherent or scientifically plausible idea, and by offering alternative, physically grounded explanations for the phenomena (consciousness, personal identity, reasoning) that dualists traditionally attribute to an immaterial soul.

Band-of-response marking (20 marks). Band 1 (1-4): Basic, fragmentary knowledge of body/soul debates; weak written communication. Band 2 (5-8): Limited knowledge, perhaps naming Plato or materialism without accurate detail; adequate written communication. Band 3 (9-12): Reasonable, generally accurate account of Plato's dualism with some reference to at least one materialist critique, though development may be uneven; adequate specialist vocabulary. Band 4 (13-16): Good, accurate knowledge of Plato's dualism (including the cave analogy) and several materialist positions (materialism, epiphenomenalism, behaviourism, identity thesis), with clear explanation of how they differ; clear organisation. Band 5 (17-20): Comprehensive, precise and well-organised knowledge of dualist and materialist positions, using accurate technical vocabulary and demonstrating sophisticated understanding of the philosophical tensions between them. Max 20 marks.

The claim that modern warfare has rendered the Just War tradition outdated raises a genuine and important challenge, but examining how the tradition actually functions in relation to weapons of mass destruction and modern conflict suggests the claim overstates its case.

There is real force to the challenge. Weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological — are, by their basic design, largely incapable of discriminating between combatants and non-combatants, since their destructive effects (blast, radiation, contamination) extend indiscriminately across entire populations and geographic areas; this places them in severe and perhaps irresolvable tension with the jus in bello principle of discrimination. Nuclear deterrence strategy compounds the problem: credible deterrence typically depends on a genuine willingness to threaten retaliation against population centres, arguably requiring states to commit, at least conditionally, to actions that just war criteria would clearly forbid if actually carried out. Modern warfare also complicates jus ad bellum criteria in other ways: conflicts increasingly involve non-state actors such as terrorist organisations, for whom the criterion of 'legitimate authority' was not originally designed, while drone warfare and cyber warfare blur traditional battlefield boundaries and raise new questions about proportionality and discrimination that classical just war theorists could not have anticipated.

However, several considerations suggest that the tradition remains workable rather than simply outdated. First, the tradition has continued to develop in response to precisely these challenges: the relatively recent addition of jus post bellum criteria shows the tradition adapting to address post-conflict justice in an era of prolonged, asymmetric conflicts and complex peace settlements, rather than remaining frozen in its classical form. Second, much of modern international humanitarian law — including the Geneva Conventions' protections for civilians and prisoners of war — is directly built upon just war principles of discrimination and proportionality, demonstrating the tradition's continuing practical influence on how modern warfare is actually regulated and judged, even by secular international institutions. Third, and most importantly, the Just War tradition's central function regarding weapons of mass destruction may not be to justify their use at all, but rather to provide the very grounds on which their use can be judged almost always disproportionate and indiscriminate, and therefore wrong; on this reading, the tradition's application to WMD is a feature, not a failure — it correctly and consistently forbids their use, rather than failing to address the question. For Christians uncomfortable with this near-total prohibition, the pacifist tradition remains available as a still more restrictive alternative entirely consistent with, rather than a replacement for, the underlying moral seriousness the Just War tradition shares.

On balance, weapons of mass destruction and other features of modern warfare place severe and genuine strain on aspects of the Just War tradition, particularly discrimination and proportionality, and require its principles to be applied with considerable interpretive care to novel situations such as cyberwarfare and non-state conflict. However, the tradition's continued evolution, its foundational influence on modern humanitarian law, and its capacity to yield a clear, principled condemnation of indiscriminate weapons rather than simply falling silent in their presence, together suggest that it remains a workable, if strained, ethical framework rather than an outdated one. The claim should therefore only be partly accepted.

Band-of-response marking (30 marks). Band 1 (1-6): Basic, largely descriptive response with little genuine evaluation. Band 2 (7-12): Limited critical analysis, perhaps outlining Just War criteria without meaningful assessment of the claim. Band 3 (13-18): Reasonable evaluation with some balanced discussion of strengths and weaknesses (e.g. WMD and discrimination versus jus post bellum's development), reaching a basic conclusion. Band 4 (19-24): Good, well-developed critical evaluation engaging directly with the claim, using relevant reference points (nuclear deterrence, the Geneva Conventions, non-state actors) and reaching a justified conclusion; clear organisation. Band 5 (25-30): Sophisticated, sustained critical evaluation that directly and repeatedly engages the claim, weighs strong counter-arguments with precision, and reaches a well-substantiated, independently argued conclusion; excellent use of specialist vocabulary throughout. Max 30 marks.

John Hick's replica theory offers an influential attempt to explain how personal identity might survive death without relying on Platonic-style substance dualism, but it faces a serious objection that limits how convincing it can ultimately be judged to be.

Hick's theory proposes that at the moment of death, God recreates an exact psychophysical replica of the deceased person — identical in memory, character, and physical appearance — in a different, non-spatial 'resurrection world'. Because this replica possesses complete continuity of memory and personality with the original person, Hick argues it should be recognised as genuinely the same person continuing to exist, not merely a new person who closely resembles the deceased.

The theory has real strengths. It avoids the difficult metaphysical commitments of Platonic or Cartesian dualism, which must explain how a wholly immaterial soul substance could coherently interact with, or ever have been unified with, a physical body — a problem dualists have never fully resolved. Hick's model instead treats the person as an essentially psychophysical unity (a view more consistent with much contemporary psychology and neuroscience, which finds personality and memory deeply embedded in physical brain processes) while still offering a route to survival after bodily death. The theory also arguably fits certain biblical resurrection imagery better than pure dualism does: Paul's discussion of the 'spiritual body' in 1 Corinthians 15 suggests a transformed, re-embodied continuation of the person, rather than a purely immaterial soul floating free of any bodily form, which resonates with Hick's picture of a recreated psychophysical replica.

However, the theory faces a serious and, on balance, largely unresolved difficulty: the 'replica objection'. Critics point out that exact resemblance, however complete, is not obviously sufficient for numerical identity — the claim that the replica simply is the same person, rather than merely an extremely similar new person. This concern is sharpened by considering the logical possibility that God could, in principle, create two or more exact replicas simultaneously: if this occurred, both replicas could not coherently be identical to the single original person (since two distinct things cannot both be numerically identical to one thing), suggesting that resemblance alone, however exact, cannot guarantee genuine identity, in which case even a single replica's status as 'the same person' becomes doubtful rather than secure. The analogy of a perfect forged copy of a painting is often used here: however visually indistinguishable a perfect copy is from the original, it remains a different, numerically distinct painting, not the original canvas — suggesting an exact psychophysical replica might likewise be a qualitatively identical but numerically distinct new person, rather than a genuine continuation of the deceased. The theory also depends on an essentially unverifiable metaphysical claim about divine action across worlds, which, while consistent with theistic belief, cannot be independently confirmed or tested, and evidence sometimes offered in its support, such as near-death experiences, remains highly contested and does not straightforwardly corroborate the specific replica mechanism Hick proposes.

On balance, Hick's replica theory offers a genuinely thoughtful and philosophically serious alternative to dualist accounts of survival, avoiding some of dualism's characteristic difficulties and fitting well with a holistic, psychophysical view of the person. However, the replica objection — particularly the multiple-replica thought experiment — raises a substantial and largely unanswered challenge to whether the theory genuinely secures numerical personal identity rather than merely qualitative resemblance, meaning the theory should be judged as coherent and worth taking seriously, but not, on balance, fully convincing.

Band-of-response marking (30 marks). Band 1 (1-6): Basic, largely descriptive response with little genuine evaluation. Band 2 (7-12): Limited critical analysis, perhaps outlining replica theory without meaningful assessment of the claim. Band 3 (13-18): Reasonable evaluation with some balanced discussion of strengths and weaknesses (e.g. avoiding dualism versus the replica objection), reaching a basic conclusion. Band 4 (19-24): Good, well-developed critical evaluation engaging directly with the claim, using relevant reference points (1 Corinthians 15, the multiple-replica thought experiment) and reaching a justified conclusion; clear organisation. Band 5 (25-30): Sophisticated, sustained critical evaluation that directly and repeatedly engages the claim, weighs strong counter-arguments with precision, and reaches a well-substantiated, independently argued conclusion; excellent use of specialist vocabulary throughout. Max 30 marks.

A strong case can be made that religious faith, properly understood, is an authentic expression of human freedom rather than its denial, and this case is considerably strengthened when set alongside the treatment of free will and determinism in the Global Ethics unit.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard offers the clearest theistic existentialist account of faith as freedom. For Kierkegaard, religious faith cannot be reduced to rational proof or objective certainty; instead, faith requires a 'leap' — a passionate, freely willed commitment made precisely in the absence of, or even against, purely rational demonstration. Far from being coerced by evidence or external authority, the individual who makes this leap does so through what Kierkegaard calls 'passionate inwardness', freely staking their whole existence on a commitment that cannot be forced upon them by argument alone. On this account, faith is not the abandonment of freedom to an external power, but one of the most demanding and authentic exercises of it: the believer freely chooses to relate themselves absolutely to what Kierkegaard calls the absolute (God), a choice that, because it cannot be rationally compelled, must be made in genuine freedom or not at all.

This case can be substantially reinforced by reference to the free will and determinism debate studied in the Global Ethics unit (Unit A2 7). That unit distinguishes libertarian (incompatibilist) accounts of free will, which hold that at least some human choices are genuinely undetermined by prior physical or psychological causes, from hard determinist accounts, which hold that every human choice, including apparently 'free' ones, is fully determined by antecedent causes (whether physical, psychological, environmental or genetic) and that freedom is therefore illusory. If a libertarian account of free will is correct — if human beings genuinely possess the capacity for undetermined, self-originating choice — then the religious 'leap of faith' Kierkegaard describes is not a special or anomalous case requiring separate justification, but a paradigm instance of the same underlying human capacity for free, self-determining choice that libertarian free will theorists defend in the context of moral responsibility more generally: just as a libertarian holds that a person can freely choose between right and wrong action, unconstrained by determining causes, so too can a person freely choose to commit to religious faith, unconstrained by either external coercion or internal psychological necessity.

Conversely, this connection between the two units cuts both ways: a hard determinist position, which the Global Ethics unit also examines, would call into question not only moral responsibility for right and wrong action but, by the same logic, the very possibility of a genuinely free 'leap' of faith at all — if all apparent choices are determined, then what looks like a free religious commitment would, on a hard determinist reading, be as illusory as any other supposedly free choice. This shows that the case for faith as an authentic expression of freedom stands or falls together with the wider philosophical case for libertarian free will defended elsewhere in the specification, strengthening rather than weakening the claim that the two questions — is religious faith free, and is human choice generally free — are, at root, the same underlying philosophical question applied to different domains of human experience.

Band-of-response marking (20 marks). Explicit hurdle: to access Bands 4-5 (13-20), candidates must make clear, meaningful reference to at least one other unit of study. Band 1 (1-4): Basic, fragmentary knowledge; no meaningful reference to another unit. Band 2 (5-8): Limited knowledge, perhaps naming Kierkegaard without accurate detail; little or no cross-unit reference. Band 3 (9-12): Reasonable, generally accurate account of faith as freedom, with attempted but underdeveloped reference to another unit of study. Band 4 (13-16): Good, accurate knowledge of Kierkegaard's account of faith, with clear and meaningful reference to the free will/determinism debate from Global Ethics; clear organisation. Band 5 (17-20): Comprehensive, precise and well-organised knowledge, using accurate technical vocabulary and demonstrating sophisticated, well-integrated cross-unit synthesis between faith-as-freedom and libertarian free will. Max 20 marks.

The claim that secularisation shows religious faith becoming irrelevant to human freedom and flourishing draws on real sociological evidence, but wider human experience beyond institutional church statistics complicates this picture considerably.

The case for the claim has genuine sociological support. Max Weber's account of modernity as a process of 'disenchantment' anticipated a long-term decline in religion's social and personal significance as scientific and bureaucratic rationality expanded, and this prediction finds support in measurable trends across much of Western Europe: declining church attendance, falling formal religious affiliation, and the rapid growth of religiously unaffiliated 'nones', particularly among younger generations, suggest that institutional religious faith is indeed losing its former centrality to many people's sense of identity and flourishing in these societies.

However, drawing on other aspects of human experience beyond narrow Western institutional data substantially challenges the claim's global and psychological reach. Sociologically, the strong secularisation thesis has been significantly revised by scholars including Peter Berger, who in his later work explicitly retracted his earlier prediction of religion's inevitable global decline, pointing instead to vigorous religious growth across much of the world, including the rapid expansion of Christianity and Islam across the Global South, and the continued high levels of religiosity in the United States, a highly modernised society that has not followed the Western European secularisation pattern. Sociologists of religion have also observed a shift from institutional decline toward what has been described as 'believing without belonging' — many people who no longer attend formal religious services continue to hold spiritual beliefs and seek meaning through more individualised, less institutionally bound forms of spirituality, suggesting a transformation in religion's social form rather than a simple disappearance of religious meaning-making from human experience. Psychologically, the work of Viktor Frankl, developed through his experience in Nazi concentration camps and his subsequent logotherapy, argued that a sense of meaning and purpose — frequently, though not exclusively, provided through religious or spiritual frameworks — is central to genuine human flourishing and psychological resilience even under extreme conditions, evidence that cuts directly against the idea that religious or spiritual meaning-making is becoming irrelevant to human wellbeing. Politically and globally, religion continues to play a highly significant, if sometimes troubling, role in shaping identity, community life and public life worldwide, from the charitable and community work of faith-based organisations to the continuing importance of religious identity in many contemporary political movements and conflicts — hardly evidence of a phenomenon fading into irrelevance.

At the same time, the New Atheist critique associated with writers such as Richard Dawkins offers a genuine counter-consideration: on this view, institutional religion has historically constrained rather than enabled human freedom, through dogmatic authority and resistance to scientific and moral progress, so its decline in parts of the West might represent an increase, not a loss, of human freedom and flourishing for those affected — a view that should be weighed seriously even by those unpersuaded by the secularisation thesis as a whole.

On balance, the claim correctly identifies a genuine pattern of institutional decline in parts of the Western world, but the wider evidence of continued and even growing religiosity globally, the psychological significance of spiritual meaning-making for flourishing, and the persistence of religion in individualised and political forms together suggest that religious faith is transforming rather than simply becoming irrelevant to human freedom and flourishing. The claim should therefore only be partly accepted.

Band-of-response marking (30 marks). Explicit hurdle: to access Bands 3-5 (13-30), candidates must engage meaningfully with other aspects of human experience. Band 1 (1-6): Basic, largely descriptive response with little genuine evaluation and no meaningful engagement with other aspects of human experience. Band 2 (7-12): Limited critical analysis; other aspects of human experience, if present, are undeveloped — mandatory ceiling if genuinely absent. Band 3 (13-18): Reasonable evaluation with some engagement with other aspects of human experience (e.g. global religious trends, Frankl), reaching a basic conclusion. Band 4 (19-24): Good, well-developed critical evaluation engaging directly with the claim, using well-integrated other aspects of human experience (Berger's retraction, 'believing without belonging', New Atheism) and reaching a justified conclusion; clear organisation. Band 5 (25-30): Sophisticated, sustained critical evaluation that directly and repeatedly engages the claim, weighs strong counter-arguments with precision using extensive, well-integrated other aspects of human experience, and reaches a well-substantiated, independently argued conclusion. Max 30 marks.