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The Shining Human Creature: Christian Ethics, Vol. 1
What did God intendman to be? What will man be when restored by grace? How can this vision drive our thoughts, actions, and–most importantly–our loves?
In the wake of the Reformation, Christians all over continental Europe sought to take the theoretical concerns of theology and pair them to the practical. In the wake of the gains made by the Protestant movement, they asked a question posed by all great Christian thinkers before them: what does it mean for man to live as one restored in Christ?
Into this conversation comes Thomas Traherne—clergyman, poet, and mystic—to cast a vision of the “shining human creature,” the truly virtuous man,and the God who made and loves him. His writing demonstrates how philosophy can befriend poetics, how the intellect can be at home with the imagination of the heart, and how virtue ethics can be transposed into a truly Christian key.
In this new modernization—complete with a new introduction—by Colin Chan Redemer, readers can delight in this poetic and masterful seventeenth century text without stumbling over arcane language.
Traherne is less well-known than he ought to be, given his rich prose and ability to weave together theology, anthropology, and virtue ethics, all in service of Christian devotion. Traherne’s work is a revelation not only for students of the Reformation but for anyone asking foundational questions of ethics and anthropology. We are thrilled to bring what should be a Christian classic back into the Church’s awareness.
In the wake of the Reformation, Christians all over continental Europe sought to take the theoretical concerns of theology and pair them to the practical. In the wake of the gains made by the Protestant movement, they asked a question posed by all great Christian thinkers before them: what does it mean for man to live as one restored in Christ?
Into this conversation comes Thomas Traherne—clergyman, poet, and mystic—to cast a vision of the “shining human creature,” the truly virtuous man,and the God who made and loves him. His writing demonstrates how philosophy can befriend poetics, how the intellect can be at home with the imagination of the heart, and how virtue ethics can be transposed into a truly Christian key.
In this new modernization—complete with a new introduction—by Colin Chan Redemer, readers can delight in this poetic and masterful seventeenth century text without stumbling over arcane language.
Traherne is less well-known than he ought to be, given his rich prose and ability to weave together theology, anthropology, and virtue ethics, all in service of Christian devotion. Traherne’s work is a revelation not only for students of the Reformation but for anyone asking foundational questions of ethics and anthropology. We are thrilled to bring what should be a Christian classic back into the Church’s awareness.
133 pages, Paperback
Published January 25, 2023
8 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Traherne
87 books39 followersThomas Traherne, MA (1636 or 1637 – ca. 27 September 1674) was an English poet, clergyman, theologian, and religious writer. Little information is known about his life. The intense, scholarly spirituality in his writings led to his being commemorated by the Anglican Church on 10 October (the anniversary of his death in 1674).
The work for which he is best known today is the Centuries of Meditations, a collection of short paragraphs in which he reflects on Christian life and ministry, philosophy, happiness, desire and childhood. This was first published in 1908 after having been rediscovered in manuscript ten years earlier. His poetry likewise was first published in 1903 and 1910 (The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D. and Poems of Felicity). His prose works include Roman Forgeries (1673), Christian Ethics (1675), and A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God (1699).
Traherne's poetry is often associated with the metaphysical poets, even though his poetry was unknown for two centuries after his death. His manuscripts were kept among the private papers of the Skipps family of Ledbury, Herefordshire, until 1888. Then, in the winter of 1896–1897, two manuscript volumes containing his poems and meditations were discovered by chance for sale in a street bookstall. The poems were initially thought to be the work of Traherne's contemporary Henry Vaughan (1621–1695). Only through research was his identity uncovered and his work prepared for publication under his name. As a result, much of his work was not published until the first decade of the 20th century.
Traherne's writings frequently explore the glory of creation and what he perceived as his intimate relationship with God. His writing conveys an ardent, almost childlike love of God, and is compared to similar themes in the works of later poets William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. His love for the natural world is frequently expressed in his works by a treatment of nature that evokes Romanticism—two centuries before the Romantic movement.
The work for which he is best known today is the Centuries of Meditations, a collection of short paragraphs in which he reflects on Christian life and ministry, philosophy, happiness, desire and childhood. This was first published in 1908 after having been rediscovered in manuscript ten years earlier. His poetry likewise was first published in 1903 and 1910 (The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D. and Poems of Felicity). His prose works include Roman Forgeries (1673), Christian Ethics (1675), and A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God (1699).
Traherne's poetry is often associated with the metaphysical poets, even though his poetry was unknown for two centuries after his death. His manuscripts were kept among the private papers of the Skipps family of Ledbury, Herefordshire, until 1888. Then, in the winter of 1896–1897, two manuscript volumes containing his poems and meditations were discovered by chance for sale in a street bookstall. The poems were initially thought to be the work of Traherne's contemporary Henry Vaughan (1621–1695). Only through research was his identity uncovered and his work prepared for publication under his name. As a result, much of his work was not published until the first decade of the 20th century.
Traherne's writings frequently explore the glory of creation and what he perceived as his intimate relationship with God. His writing conveys an ardent, almost childlike love of God, and is compared to similar themes in the works of later poets William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. His love for the natural world is frequently expressed in his works by a treatment of nature that evokes Romanticism—two centuries before the Romantic movement.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 12, 2023
Outstanding.
October 8, 2023
A modernization of Traherne’s original, it is a challenging read but well worth it. He focuses on the virtues that set him a kind apart for the creatures and particularly the redeemed human from the unredeemed. Love takes centre stage and his description of God as love is particularly worthwhile. He also focuses on knowledge and wisdom as setting us apart for the creatures.
Reading older authors reminds one that the truths and beliefs of the Christian faith do not really change. What believers of the 17th century believed is much the same as what genuine believers of today believe. It gives comfort that our faith is sure and tried and tested.
Reading older authors reminds one that the truths and beliefs of the Christian faith do not really change. What believers of the 17th century believed is much the same as what genuine believers of today believe. It gives comfort that our faith is sure and tried and tested.
March 9, 2023
To discover Traherne at all is a wonder; to read him upon the heels of reading Aquinas (and in the midst of reading Edwards, too) is a wonder still, as Traherne presents a Protestant retrieval of all that is best in the “Angelic Doctor.”
Traherne can do doxology with the best in Holy Tradition, and Redemer’s modernization of his elevated language is only enough to smooth its flow without detracting in the least from Traherne’s gloriously high tone for the highest and most glorious of subjects - God Himself - and then for “the shining human creature” which we once were created to be and will one day be again.
Traherne can do doxology with the best in Holy Tradition, and Redemer’s modernization of his elevated language is only enough to smooth its flow without detracting in the least from Traherne’s gloriously high tone for the highest and most glorious of subjects - God Himself - and then for “the shining human creature” which we once were created to be and will one day be again.
May 4, 2024
Really wonderful meditation. Traherne brings a crispness of thought to positively understand what it means to be human from an Aristotelian informed Christian perspective oriented towards virtue ethics. Also great familiarity with Aquinas, who is on my radar to read soon.
Highly recommend.
Highly recommend.
July 21, 2025
This is Christian Vitalism.
Traherne’s prose is bursting at the seems with life and love and the pursuit of God’s glory on earth — this beautiful and wonderful world full of shining human creatures — as it is in heaven.
“To live by accident, and never to pursue any happiness at all is neither angelic, nor brutish, nor demonic, but worse than anything in some respect. It is to act against that which makes us human, and to wage war with our very selves. They who place their ease in carelessness are of all others the greatest enemies and disturbers of themselves.”
“Inferior happinesses are but miseries compared with the highest. A penny is good and pleases a beggar in need, but a gold coin is better. An estate of ten thousand pounds a year is better than a gold coin, but our ambition carries us to principalities and empires. An empire is more desirable than a province, and the wider, the richer, the better it is, the more desirable. But the empire of all the earth is a bubble compared to the heavens, and the heavens themselves are less than nothing compared to an infinite dominion.”
“Virtue is desirable and glorious, because it teaches us through many difficulties in this tempestuous world to sail smoothly, and attain the haven.”
Traherne’s prose is bursting at the seems with life and love and the pursuit of God’s glory on earth — this beautiful and wonderful world full of shining human creatures — as it is in heaven.
“To live by accident, and never to pursue any happiness at all is neither angelic, nor brutish, nor demonic, but worse than anything in some respect. It is to act against that which makes us human, and to wage war with our very selves. They who place their ease in carelessness are of all others the greatest enemies and disturbers of themselves.”
“Inferior happinesses are but miseries compared with the highest. A penny is good and pleases a beggar in need, but a gold coin is better. An estate of ten thousand pounds a year is better than a gold coin, but our ambition carries us to principalities and empires. An empire is more desirable than a province, and the wider, the richer, the better it is, the more desirable. But the empire of all the earth is a bubble compared to the heavens, and the heavens themselves are less than nothing compared to an infinite dominion.”
“Virtue is desirable and glorious, because it teaches us through many difficulties in this tempestuous world to sail smoothly, and attain the haven.”
March 27, 2025
Note: this is a modernization of only the first 1/4 or so of Tarherne's unpublished work "Christian Ethicks". Redemer's book "Made Like the Maker" continues the modernization, but still only accounts for the next 1/4 or less. I'm hopeful that Redemer will continue and complete his work, given how profoundly transformative this much has been.
Traherne offers an exhaustive and at times painstaking analysis of the goodness that virtue offers to the Christian walk. Redemer does a good job of making the language accessible while preserving the feeling that it was written many centuries ago.
Traherne offers an exhaustive and at times painstaking analysis of the goodness that virtue offers to the Christian walk. Redemer does a good job of making the language accessible while preserving the feeling that it was written many centuries ago.
September 21, 2023
Not even sure Thomas Traherne is a Protestant:
"To make ourselves amiable and beautiful by the exercise of our own power produces another kind of beauty and glory than if we were compelled to be good by all his intervening power." 4.10
"For as by sin we forfeited our happiness, so a new obedience consisting in the practice of proper virtues was necessary to recover it." 4.16
Colin Redemer's modernization is quite good, but I remain unconvinced that Traherne is good.
"To make ourselves amiable and beautiful by the exercise of our own power produces another kind of beauty and glory than if we were compelled to be good by all his intervening power." 4.10
"For as by sin we forfeited our happiness, so a new obedience consisting in the practice of proper virtues was necessary to recover it." 4.16
Colin Redemer's modernization is quite good, but I remain unconvinced that Traherne is good.
October 27, 2025
Unfortunately I do not own(nor did I read) this coveted Davenant modernization of Traherne. I read the original text, but logging it here because it’s apparently too obscure to be in the GR database. Christian Ethics certainly seems to be one of Traherne’s theological works, unlike the poetical Centuries of Meditations. A gem of an English Protestant work well worth your time.
March 29, 2023
I very much enjoyed this look at Traherne's take on Christian virtue ethics. His prose is beautiful and I can see some of Traherne's thought and phrasing echoing through C.S. Lewis' works now that I've read this.
March 25, 2023
Really fantastic!
December 13, 2023
Good! Not a substitute for the actual Traherne but a good modernization to whet the appetite.
May 30, 2024
Splendid!
April 29, 2025
What a delight.
October 2, 2025
Excellent Christian introduction to ethics.
Want to read
July 1, 2024Aug 2023. Tried to start but school year is crazy. Maybe later.
May 2023. Gift from a friend.
May 2023. Gift from a friend.
September 1, 2025
I've read this twice and... More needed.
4th time: so brief but so dense, so much to ponder, so much delight to find in the love of God; loving God and loving your neighbour.
4th time: so brief but so dense, so much to ponder, so much delight to find in the love of God; loving God and loving your neighbour.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews