Why Christology "Matters" for Ethics: Constructing a Typology of Options

This essay returns to the famous sociological "typology" of Christian ethics in Ernst Troeltsch's classic Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (1912), in which "church," "sect," and "mystic" "types" are contrasted. It enquires whether the question of the significance of Christology for ethics is best not answered unilaterally, but more illuminatingly through this "typological" approach. Taking the near-contemporaries William Temple, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Howard Thurman as exemplars of celebrated Christologians who were also ethicists, it draws systematic comparisons between them on the basis of their "type," but also underscores that the particular efficacy of their witness relates intrinsically to the way that their distinctive "types" correlated with, and responded to, the challenging political circumstances which they confronted.