Description
About the book
The Christian God presents South African philosopher Augustine Shutte’s understanding of his Christian faith. Through a chronological series of essays, written over a period of fifty years, we are invited to trace the development of this theology and its application to a wide variety of topics. In an entertaining introductory chapter, Shutte explains the provenance of each essay and the intention of the author at the time. A final chapter is a reflection by the editor, Patrick Giddy, on the import of Shutte’s theological development, drawing upon unpublished notebook entries and on his religious poetry.
About the author
Augustine Shutte (d. 2016) was a South African philosopher associated with the University of Cape Town. He is most well-known through his books Philosophy for Africa (1993) and Ubuntu. An Ethic for a New South Africa (2001).
Shutte was formerly a member of the Dominican Order of Preachers in the Catholic Church and continued for many years as Cape Town convenor of the Dominican Family. The slogan of the Dominican friars, Contemplata Alliis Tradere, pass on to others the fruits of your reflection, could well be applied to his own life. Shutte was a founder of the School of Theology at the university chaplaincy and a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of South Africa.
His other books include The Mystery of Humanity (1994), and a book of his poems, The Way Home (2017), published posthumously. His novel, Conversion, set largely in the Dominican priory in Stellenbosch in the late 1960s, is available in a Kindle version under his ‘secular’ name, Michael Neale-Shutte.
Bio of editor
Patrick Giddy is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Kwazulu- Natal. His PhD (UCT, 1994) on recent Thomist ethics, was supervised by Augustine Shutte.
