WHY WE CAN'T WAIT FOR CHRISTMAS

🎄 Nathan Jacobs presents his latest podcast in a Christmas wrapper with a ribbon on top. Nice! But what he actually does, is making Eastern Orthodox metaphysics and anthropology more understandable on a sub academic level. His lecture is still deeply steeped in philosophy, because that is Jacobs' wheel house. But it is probably the deepest, yet the shortest and most concise meaning of Christmas you will ever get out of anyone in the Ortho sphere. 

Dec. 11, 2025 The Nathan Jacobs Podcast: The Cosmic Longing of Christmas | All Creation Groans. Details. 

We have been talking a lot in the blog about the synthesis of the spiritual and the concrete world. In the West we think of these as two separate and opposing categories -- body and soul -- in what Father Stephen calls 'plato-brain'. But Eastern thought per Aristotle sees only one world in which the two exist simultaneously, only separated by a porous veil.

Jacobs, in this lecture has a few interesting observations in that regard. After the Fall, man himself became this synthesis of animal and divine nature, spirit and concrete matter. Jesus Christ in his incarnation became a synthesis of God and man. Man as a co-creator can elevate animals to partake in the spiritual Kingdom of God. 

In the new year we will go deeper into this subject. It is this 'plato-brain' that is causing many of the problems and explains why the Western world view is faltering. That is putting it mildly: the situation is more like spiritual collapse, or spiritual death as the Fathers express it. 

We owe the concept of the integration of body and soul to Greek classical philosophy. But Western theology, deeply wedded to Plato's dualism, became obsessed with division, taxonomy and categorization. Plato's distinction turned into opposition and a zero sum game.

More on this issue under the tag of  synthesis.


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