Key Idea: The guide defines vocation unusually broadly: marriage, family life, work, or consecrated religious life. Putting a job and a household beside a monastery is a theological decision — Christianity has resisted confining holiness to a specialist class.
Tested as
- Variety of religious experience within one religion
- Conversion and personal revelation
- Gender: ordination, and women mystics
Watch for
- Treating vocation as meaning ordained ministry
- Describing conversion with a single anecdote
- Treating mysticism as opposed to institutional Christianity
Use
- Vocation, stewardship, grace, evangelism, mysticism
- Meditation and contemplation; writers on spirituality; retreats
- Women mystics; charismatic worship
| Item | What the guide says |
|---|---|
| Vocation | Marriage, family life, work, or consecrated religious life (clergy, monks, nuns) |
| Practices | Daily private devotions; communal prayer; service to others; stewardship, grace, evangelism, mysticism |
| Conversion | Personal revelation through experience of God in the Bible, history, nature, people, the Church and Jesus; adult baptism |
| Meditation | Meditation and contemplation; writers on spirituality |
| Gender | Ordination of women in various denominations, and women mystics |
| Charismatic worship | Listed under public worship — the Spirit expected to act in the gathering |
In churches where women could not be ordained, some women exercised great religious authority through the recognised authority of their experience, and their writings were read by clergy who could not have ordained them. So Christianity has always had two routes to religious authority — one through office, one through recognised experience. The pairing is the guide making that point.
Examine what Christians mean by personal revelation.
🔒 Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Discuss the claim that Christianity has no place for the ordinary working life.
🔒 Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
How does the guide define vocation? Marriage, family life, work, or consecrated religious life among clergy, monks and nuns. The breadth is a theological claim, not a courtesy.
Name the six avenues of personal revelation. The Bible, history, nature, people, the Church, and Jesus — with adult baptism as the rite that marks conversion.
Why does the guide pair women mystics with ordination? Because experience conferred religious authority where office did not — showing that Christianity has two routes to authority, one through office and one through recognised experience.
What distinguishes charismatic worship? A doctrinal claim rather than a style: the Holy Spirit is expected to act in the gathering itself, which changes what a service is for.
Exam tips
- Vocation includes work and marriage. That breadth is the argument.
- Six avenues of revelation. Naming them beats any single conversion story.
- The women mystics pairing is rare and strong. Use it in any authority question.
- Charismatic worship is a doctrine expressed as a service. Say what it claims.