October 2023 – AD CAELOS

How do you pronounce “Ad Caelos”? Where did the name come from? What does it mean?

The Medieval Model

How do you pronounce it? Using the ecclesiastical pronunciation, it’s odd CHAI-lows (odd as in “odd,” chai as in the tea, and lows as opposed to “highs”). The second syllable is emphasized.

Where did the name come from? I studied Latin in high school and college, and when I was working on my master’s at HCU, we did a deep dive on the Middle Ages, focusing in particular on what is called the “medieval model” of the universe.

Ever the “systemizers,” medieval thinkers envisioned the created order with the earth at the center, and concentric, invisible spheres (“heavens”) as you moved outwards. Each of these spheres held a “planet” (which simply means “wanderer”), starting with the moon and moving outward and upward through Mercury, Venus, etc. Beyond the seventh planet, Saturn, was the firmament, into which all the stars were placed.

Seven spheres, seven planets: “The Seven Heavens.”*

What does it mean? In Latin, ad means “to” or “moving in a direction towards.” And caelos means “heavens” (accusative plural). Ad caelos —> “moving away from the earth, upwards toward the heavens,” which is what Jesus did in the Ascension (ascendit ad caelos).

More than you wanted to know. But there you have it.

*In his book The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis holds that while we now know the Medieval cosmology to be untrue, it still holds great value as a “a supreme medieval work of art.” It was a beautiful way for our forbears to understand God’s created order and is not to be confused with our modern conception of “astrology.”

The Lord is my secretary, I shall not want

God knows that when you eat of the Tree of Good and Evil your eyes will be opened, and you will be like him.
Genesis 3:5 (ESV)

Everything broke the day we believed this lie.

The insinuation (I use that world quite deliberately) is that we are fit to rule our lives independent of our Maker. We foolishly set ourselves up as heads of state of our little kingdoms of one.

Because God gave us free will, each of us gets to choose our life priorities. He will not impose Himself on us, a requirement of love. God doesn’t want us to be robots.

But because outrageous arrogance and stupidity are in our very DNA — not to mention the fact that we were made for community, for putting others first — we are not fit to be a king. The kicker: If we include the Lord at all in our lives, we try to go about assigning Him a support role.

Think about this! God made the universe and all that is in it. He holds everything together — not just this little ball of dirt and water, but all the planets, stars, galaxies, the “whole show” — with His little finger.

Is this the kind of being you expect to be your assistant to help you reach your life goals? Are you calling on the Holy of Holies to serve you in your little kingdom of one?

Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Here’s how: How does one become wise? – AD CAELOS

My truth, your truth

Hank and Martin, Wyoming, 2015.

Hang with me here. I’m going to point out some things that will seem very elementary. And I’ll point out some things that might seem on their face to be problematic.

Let’s start by level-setting a couple of things about language, regarding both its proper uses as well as where it can go wrong:

First, words are used to point to reality, to what is. While we sometimes miss the mark in our pointing, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do when we use a word: point to what’s really there.

Second, words are not these static things. They have different uses and meanings — varying situational definitions, if you will. For instance, I can know a fact. And I can know a woman.

A good part of our disagreements are simply matters of definition.

Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about truth. Whether we have every really taken very long to think about it, we all know that objective reality exists. A particular rock is either there or it isn’t. We can say that a thing’s being is independent of our knowledge of or about that thing. A child can tell you – and he’d be right in doing so – that a tree that falls in the forest is really there, falling, whether we are on site to observe it.

Final point for now: Everyone knows that while our senses are imperfect and can fool us, it’s not a very common problem if we are reasonably well in body and mind. So I can rightly say that I know this particular rock is hard, white, slightly abrasive, cool to the touch (though I know that that will change when the morning sun hits it), and about four feet from that small tree (now three and a half after I’ve picked it up and put it back down).

Why on God’s green earth am I taking the time to point out such obvious things?

I bring up these obvious things because in our current culture, we often get confused about the word “truth,” seeming to speak sometimes as if we can make a rock or a tree appear or disappear based on whether we want it to exist.

In the next post, we’ll continue our exploration, starting with the idea of preferences.