Typing the Typologies: Some Parallels in the Career of Church-Sect and Extrinsic-Intrinsic

church-sect typology have similar origins and similar characteristics. Both were developed as tools of analysis in the service of prophet-like concern for the purity and the social efficacy of religion. Both reflect their originators' philosophical struggle with the relation between the historical and the transcendent. The formal properties of both types, though notoriously unsuited for many of the scientific tasks to which they have subsequently been assigned, are admirably suited to express these concerns that first evoked them.