This Joint Honours degree balances the two different but highly complementary faculties and culminates with the assessment of the claims of religion. A student on this course will learn to assess, analyse, and reason when presented with the works of great thinkers and various schools of thought. They will examine the biggest moral questions concerning the nature of God and the impact of religion on our lives. This is a small course with an average annual intake of approximately 30 undergraduates and an unusual, almost perfectly balanced ratio of men and women. There are 5 applicants for every place available.
Theology, “the Queen of Sciences”, addresses the intellectual foundations of religion as well as the social, historical, and cultural contexts of religion. A broad range of religions can be studied. The topic: “The Figure of Jesus through the Centuries” is compulsory in the first year and students have the option of taking a number of languages such as Qur’anic Arabic or Sanskrit or a paper that focuses either on the Bible or on Religion and religions. The breadth of choices in this course continues in the second and third years.
On the Philosophy side, general philosophy topics are taken in the first year, and after this, students are offered greater choice in which era of philosophers they study. Philosophy of Religion is a compulsory course in Finals along with a choice of various other Philosophy papers.
Both the Philosophy department and the Theology department have an excellent depth of knowledge and superb facilities, the Philosophy Faculty being the largest in the UK and the Theology Faculty home to over 100 academics who specialise in a breadth of eras, ancient languages, and numerous branches of religious literature.
A student on this course will typically have two tutorials a week and several lectures, depending on which options they study. First year students will have Logic seminars too. Usually, students write and submit essays ahead of tutorials, to be discussed and argued in the class. Expect to write two essays a week; this is not a degree for someone who hates writing.
There are no specific A Level (or equivalent) requirements for this course. It may be useful to study an essay writing subject as this will stand you in good stead for the essays that you will have to complete on the course.
