Human relationships — Christianity

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 2, 2.4 (Christianity). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

This is the one point on the specification where the wording itself says the teachings differ. Not 'some Christians', not 'in practice' — it asks for different Christian teachings, because on sex outside marriage and on same-sex relationships the churches have not agreed and several have split over it. Writing 'Christians believe' here answers a question nobody set.

What it means

Love is the governing principle, and the word the New Testament uses is a self-giving love rather than an affection. Love of neighbour governs sexual relationships as much as anything else, and both sides of the Christian argument start from it — which is why the disagreement is so stubborn.

Sexual relationships are treated as good and God-given rather than as a regrettable necessity. That is worth stating, because it distinguishes mainstream Christianity from the ascetic strands it has sometimes contained, and because the traditional argument is not that sex is bad but that it belongs somewhere.

Where it belongs, on the common teaching, is marriage. The traditional reasoning uses natural law — that acts have purposes built into them — together with complementarity, the view that men and women are made for each other in a way that is part of what marriage is.

And then the live division. Some Protestant churches bless same-sex unions and others do not, and the argument has caused real institutional fracture. Catholic and Orthodox teaching maintain the traditional position. Alongside both stands pastoral accommodation: the teaching is held and individual circumstances are treated with flexibility, which is what a great many churches actually do whatever their formal doctrine says.

Why believers hold it

The two sides reason from the same premises, and that is the thing to understand rather than to pick between. Everyone agrees love governs and that scripture is authoritative. The disagreement is about whether the prohibitions are permanent moral teaching or address practices located in their own time, and about whether the purposes of sex can come apart from each other.

That second question is the hinge. If union and procreation are inseparable, the traditional argument holds and same-sex relationships cannot meet what marriage is for. If they can come apart — as they plainly do for infertile couples the churches marry without hesitation — then the exclusivity has to be argued rather than assumed.

So this is a disagreement about how scripture works rather than about whether it matters, which is why it has proved unresolvable by quotation. Each side can produce texts; neither can produce a rule for reading that the other accepts.

The specification also asks for Christian responses to non-religious attitudes, and the strongest response is not another prohibition. It is a claim about what a public, binding commitment adds that consent between two people does not — which is an argument a Humanist has to engage with rather than dismiss.

Where it comes from

• The Bible, New Testament — Mark 12:31 (also Matthew 22:39, Leviticus 19:18) (translated)

  Love your neighbour as yourself.

  The second of the two great commandments. Jesus makes love of neighbour inseparable from love of God.

  What it is doing here: Is the principle both sides argue from, which is why quoting it settles nothing and explaining what each side takes it to require settles a great deal.

• The Bible, New Testament — Galatians 3:28 (translated)

  There is no longer Jew or Greek, ... slave or free, ... male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

  In Christ, ethnic, social and gender divisions do not determine standing before God.

  What it is doing here: Is the text the revisionist reading leans on, since it dissolves categories the traditional argument needs to keep in place.

Where it bites

It determines whether a couple can marry in a particular church, whether a gay person can be ordained, and how a congregation receives a cohabiting couple who start attending. These are not hypothetical consequences: they are decisions being made in parishes now, and different churches make them differently.

It also shapes how Christians respond to the secular argument that consent is what matters. The response worth making is about what a promise made publicly and bindingly does that a private agreement does not — and the response worth avoiding is a claim that people outside the tradition have no account of commitment, because they do.

What people get wrong

People think: Christians believe same-sex relationships are wrong.

Actually: The specification itself asks for different Christian teachings, because they differ. Some churches bless same-sex unions and others do not, and the disagreement has caused institutional fracture. This is the single point where writing 'Christians believe' most reliably loses marks.

People think: The traditional Christian argument is that sex is shameful.

Actually: Mainstream Christianity treats sexual relationships as good and God-given. The traditional argument is about where they belong and what they are for, not about whether they are regrettable, and answering the shame version argues with almost nobody.

People think: Non-religious people think anything is acceptable as long as both agree.

Actually: Humanist ethics has a developed account of commitment, harm and honesty. Treating the secular position as consent and nothing else is a strawman, and the specification asks for a Christian response to the real position rather than to a caricature.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• Name traditions rather than writing 'Christians believe'; this is the specification point where that error is most costly.
• Make three attitudes genuinely different positions rather than three phrasings of one, because the three-mark question is checking exactly that.
• The four-mark answer credited in reports pairs one attitude in favour citing love of neighbour with one against citing the prohibitions — one each, both developed.
• For a statement about the best model for society, the word 'best' needs a criterion, and naming the criterion is the whole evaluation.
• Put the non-religious position at full strength and then answer it, because the specification asks for the Christian response and a strawman cannot be responded to.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

The specification is precise here: Christian teaching about love as the principle of relationships, then the nature and importance of sexual relationships, then DIFFERENT Christian teachings and attitudes to sex outside marriage and to homosexuality, then atheist and Humanist attitudes and Christian responses to them. The word 'different' is doing the work: this is the point on the specification where Christianity is most visibly divided, and an answer that does not say so has answered a different question.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Agape

Self-giving love — the word the New Testament uses for the love Christians are commanded to have.

Chastity

The right ordering of sexual life according to one's state — not simply abstinence.

Natural law

The reasoning that acts have purposes built into them, used in Catholic teaching on sexuality.

Complementarity

The view that men and women are made for each other in a way that is part of what marriage is.

Celibacy

Voluntarily abstaining from marriage and sexual relationships, often for religious service.

What Christianity teaches

• shared — Love is the principle of all Christian relationships. 'Love your neighbour as yourself' governs sexual relationships as much as any other.
• shared — Sexual relationships are good and God-given rather than regrettable, which distinguishes mainstream Christianity from the ascetic strands it has sometimes contained.
• common — The proper place for sexual relationships is marriage.
  • Roman Catholic — Held firmly, on natural-law grounds: sex has procreative and unitive purposes that belong together within marriage.
  • Protestant — Taught, with widely varying pastoral practice; cohabitation is common among churchgoers and is treated with varying degrees of concern.
• divided — Whether same-sex relationships can be blessed.
  • Roman Catholic — Homosexual acts are held to be objectively disordered while the person is to be accepted with respect and compassion; same-sex marriage is not recognised.
  • Protestant — Genuinely divided. Some churches marry same-sex couples and ordain gay clergy; others maintain the traditional prohibition.
  • Evangelical — Predominantly maintains the traditional teaching, citing Leviticus and Paul's letters.

Why it teaches this

Both sides of the Christian argument reason from the same premises. Everyone agrees love is the governing principle and that scripture is authoritative; the disagreement is about whether the prohibitions are permanent moral teaching or culturally located, and whether the purposes of sex are separable. That is why the division has proved so hard to resolve: it is a disagreement about how scripture works, not about whether it matters.

Sources of authority

• The Bible, New Testament — Mark 12:31 (also Matthew 22:39, Leviticus 19:18) (translated)

  Love your neighbour as yourself.

  The second of the two great commandments. Jesus makes love of neighbour inseparable from love of God.

  How to use it: It converts a belief into an obligation towards a specific person, which is why it can be used on almost any ethical topic — but the work is in saying WHO the neighbour is in this case and what love requires of them here.

  What it does not settle: It does not tell you what love requires. It has been used to argue for and against euthanasia, for and against same-sex relationships, and for and against pacifism.

• The Bible, New Testament — Galatians 3:28 (translated)

  There is no longer Jew or Greek, ... slave or free, ... male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

  In Christ, ethnic, social and gender divisions do not determine standing before God.

  How to use it: It gives equality a theological rather than a political basis, which is why Christian equality arguments do not depend on human rights law.

  What it does not settle: It does not settle church practice. Churches that fully accept it still differ on the ordination of women, and citing it as though it settled that is the error the reports flag.

Different interpretations

• Traditional: the prohibitions in Leviticus and Paul are permanent moral teaching, and complementarity is part of what marriage is.
• Revisionist: the biblical texts address exploitative practices in their own context and not faithful same-sex partnership, and the governing principle of love points the other way.
• Pastoral accommodation: the teaching stands and individual conscience and circumstance are treated with flexibility — the position of many churches in practice, whatever their formal doctrine.

Differences within Christianity

The specification names 'different Christian teachings and attitudes' because they genuinely differ. This is the point where an answer MUST name traditions rather than write 'Christians believe'.

• Roman Catholic — Traditional teaching maintained; the person accepted, the acts not; no same-sex marriage.
• Protestant — The sharpest live division in Christianity: some churches bless same-sex unions, others do not, and the argument has caused real institutional fracture.
• Orthodox — Traditional teaching maintained.

Application to the issue

It determines whether a couple can be married in a particular church, whether a gay person can be ordained, and how a congregation receives a cohabiting couple who start attending. It also shapes Christian responses to Humanist arguments: the specification asks for those responses, and the strongest is not a counter-prohibition but a claim about what commitment adds that consent alone does not.

Arguments supporting

• Sex has purposes, and those purposes belong together in marriage. — Natural law: procreation and union are inseparable aspects of one act. (catholic)
  Answered by: The same reasoning would forbid sex where procreation is impossible, and Catholic teaching permits it for infertile and older couples — so the inseparability is asserted rather than derived.
• Scripture prohibits sex outside marriage and same-sex acts. — Passages in Leviticus and in Paul's letters, read as permanent moral teaching. (evangelical)
  Answered by: The same books contain much no church now enforces, so the question is how the texts are read — which is exactly what divides the traditions.

Arguments challenging

• The governing principle is love, and faithful same-sex love satisfies it. — 'Love your neighbour', and 'there is no longer male and female' read as dismantling the categories. (protestant)
  Answered by: Galatians 3:28 concerns standing before God rather than the form of marriage, so the move requires further argument.
• Christian traditions have already changed, and did not break. — Churches that bless same-sex unions and ordain gay clergy have continued as churches. (protestant)
  Answered by: Others read the same change as accommodation to the surrounding culture rather than as faithfulness developing.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Sexual ethics rests on consent, honesty and the avoidance of harm. On that basis a faithful same-sex relationship and a faithful heterosexual one are morally indistinguishable, and the real wrongs — coercion, betrayal, exploitation — cut across both. Humanists also argue that religious prohibitions here have caused measurable harm to gay people, which is a claim about consequences that a Christian response has to meet rather than deny.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether the purposes of sex are separable. If procreation and union can come apart, the traditional argument loses its exclusivity; if they cannot, it holds. Everything else is downstream of that one question.

Defensible conclusions

• The statement 'heterosexual relationships are the best model for society' expresses one position WITHIN Christianity rather than the position OF Christianity, so it cannot be defended as the religious view — and saying that precisely is the evaluation.
• The traditional argument is coherent where union and procreation are held inseparable, and that premise is where the disagreement actually is rather than in the scriptural texts.
• The traditions are moving at different speeds in the same direction, and whether that is faithfulness developing or faith accommodating is genuinely open — which is why a confident verdict either way is weaker than a judgement that names the criterion.

Not defensible

• Writing 'Christians believe same-sex relationships are wrong' — the specification itself says the teachings differ.
• Treating the secular position as having no account of commitment; Humanist ethics has one, and dismissing it is a strawman.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three attitudes religious people may have to same-sex relationships. Make them genuinely different positions, not three phrasings of one.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two attitudes, developed. The 2025 report credits exactly this pairing: one in favour citing love of neighbour, one against citing Leviticus.
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain differing Christian responses to sex outside marriage: the traditional argument, the pastoral accommodation, and the reasoning behind each.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'Heterosexual relationships are the best model for society.' The word 'best' needs a criterion, and naming the criterion is the whole evaluation.

Common mistakes

• Writing 'Christians believe' on the one specification point that explicitly says the teachings differ.
• Citing Leviticus without noticing that no church enforces its neighbouring provisions, which leaves the point undeveloped.
• Bringing non-religious arguments into a question about religious attitudes.

“Christians believe divorce is always wrong.” — That is the Catholic position. Orthodox Christianity permits divorce in limited circumstances, and most Protestant churches permit divorce and remarriage.

Write instead: Name the tradition. 'Catholic teaching holds marriage indissoluble, so the Church annuls rather than divorces' is accurate and scores; 'Christians believe' on a divided question is not. Do not over-correct. Many claims genuinely ARE shared — the Trinity, the resurrection, the authority of the Bible — and hedging those makes an answer weaker, not more careful. (Named in the 2025 examiner report for Paper 1.)

Grade 9 insight

Both sides of this argument are arguing about how scripture works, not about whether it is authoritative — and that is why the disagreement has been so intractable. The revisionist case is not 'ignore the Bible'; it is that the prohibitions address something other than faithful partnership, which is a reading, and the traditional case is that they do not, which is also a reading. A learner who frames the division as a hermeneutical disagreement rather than as faithful-versus-liberal has understood the actual state of the argument.

Carry on through Christianity

• Previous unit: 2.3 · Sanctity of life, abortion and euthanasia
• Next unit: 2.5 · Marriage and partnership
• Human relationships in the other religions: Buddhism · Hinduism · Islam · Judaism · Sikhism
• All of Christianity · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification