News Article

Scholar Catherine Tkacz will discuss “Typology and Realism: Moses, Jesus and Reality” at the next meeting of the Gonzaga University Socratic Club from 4-5:30, Friday, Feb. 10 in Room 101 of the Gonzaga Administration Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Tkacz, an independent scholar of early and medieval Christianity, will discuss how many modern Christians think of the Christian worldview as a construction patched together from disparate, even contradictory, experiences of an almost chaotically diverse group of people.

In contrast, Tkacz will assert that classical realism — the view that reality is coherent, intelligible, and independent of knowing human minds — is critical to Christianity as a systematic outlook. She will argue that realism is inherent to the Jewish scriptures and to the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of Christianity.

Tkacz aims to further assert that the interpretive method of typology is fundamental to the conception of truth advanced in Christian thought and that typology requires a realist outlook as well. Tkacz’s position therefore represents a portal of discovery between non-realist views of Christianity on one side and unreflective forms of uncontextualized realism on the other.

Response commentary will be offered by Rev. Patrick Hartin, a professor in Gonzaga’s classical civilizations and religious studies departments, and Rev. Paul Vivek, from Pastor of Mary Queen Parish in Spokane.

An outline of Tkacz’s talk is available on the Gonzaga Socratic Club Web site at
http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/calhoun/socratic/currentschedule.html. Also at that Web site are other resources, including, where available, texts and outlines of talks and comments offered
at past Socratic Club meetings at http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/calhoun/socratic/index.html

For more information, please contact David Calhoun, associate professor of philosophy, at (509) 323- 6743 or via e-mail to calhoun@gem.gonzaga.edu.