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Copyright 1993 by the Christian Research Institute.
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    "Catholicism for the New Age: Matthew Fox and Creation-Centered
Spirituality" (an article from the Christian Research Journal, Fall
1992, page 14) by Mitchell Pacwa, S.J.
    The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot
Miller.

-------------

Summary

    Matthew Fox, a Catholic priest, has begun a movement of
"creation-centered spirituality" to turn people away from emphasizing
man's fall into sin and Christ's redemption. Instead, he proposes that
God's "original blessing" of creation is greater than the effects of
sin. Therefore, everyone should center on finding God in creation.
This will bring about the increased creativity and love of the world
that are needed to take the human race into the 21st century.
    Fox proposes these ideas, however, at the expense of orthodox
Christian doctrine. He ignores or rejects the central scriptural
themes of the need for redemption and the centrality of Christ's
death. Though Fox is bright and well educated, his scholarship can
often be shoddy and even deceptive, as long as it makes his point. The
Vatican has rejected his teaching and all Christians should be alert
to its dangers.

-------------

    Father Matthew Timothy Fox O.P. (Order of Preachers, commonly
known as the Dominicans), has placed himself at the center of a storm
inside the Catholic church.  What gave rise to the conflict between
Fox and Catholic leadership?  Is Fox a danger to the Christian church?
These are questions we shall seek to answer in this article.

    Matthew Fox was born on December 21, 1940, entered the Dominicans
in 1960, and was ordained a priest in 1967. In 1970 he received a
doctorate, summa cum laude, from the Institut Catholique (Paris) in
Medieval theology.
    His first popular book on prayer, On Becoming a Musical, Mystical
Bear (1972), created the impetus which eventually led to his
establishing the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality
(ICCS) in 1977 at Mundelein College, a small Catholic women's college
in Chicago. He moved the ICCS to Holy Names College, another small
Catholic college in Oakland, California in 1983, where it has remained
to the present day.
    The ICCS teaching staff includes Starhawk the witch (alias Miriam
Simos); Buck Ghost Horse, a shaman (mystic guide healer); Luish Teish,
a Yoruba (West African) voodoo priestess; and Robert Frager,
representing Sufism (Islamic mysticism). Typical of New Age approaches
to spirituality, some psychology is thrown in: John Giannini, a
Jungian analyst, and Jean Lanier, a Gestalt therapist. Brian Swimme is
the resident cosmologist, and "geologian" (i.e., exponent of
environmental wisdom) Fr. (Father) Thomas Berry teaches on occasion.
    Fox established Bear and Company to publish creation spirituality
books, such as Earth Ascending, by Jose Arguelles, originator of the
1987 "Harmonic Convergence," and Medicine Cards: The Discovery of
Power through the Ways of Animals, complete with book and "medicine
shield" cards. Later he founded Creation, a magazine sponsored by the
Friends of Creation Spirituality, Inc., whose president and
editor-in-chief is Fox. Creation describes itself as "deeply
ecumenical, deeply cosmological, deeply practical and deeply
alternative." A recent issue portrays a nude Jesus Christ, seated in
the yoga lotus position, with antlers on His head (July/August, 1991).
Another shows the "Qetzalcoatl Christ," with the Lord's face in a
picture of Qetzalcoatl, the Aztec Plumed Serpent deity (May/June,
1992).
    Fox's problems with the Catholic hierarchy began in 1984 when
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's department for
protecting orthodoxy, asked the Dominican Order to investigate Fox's
writings. Three Dominican theologians examined his books in 1985 and
concluded they were not heretical. One of them, Fr. Benedict Ashley,
O.P., reported at a 1991 lecture that Fox's work did not seem worth
condemning because it was too superficial and did not appear to be a
danger to the faithful. He was wrong, as he now admits.
    The Vatican continued to object to Fox's teachings, such as his
diminishing or even denial of original sin, refusal to deny belief in
pantheism (the belief that God is all and all is God), endorsing
homosexual unions in the church, identifying humans as "mothers of
God," and calling God "our Mother." The presence of the witch,
Starhawk, on the ICCS staff caused another scandal. For these and
other reasons, the Vatican in 1986 asked the Dominican Master General
to stop Fox. But the Chicago Dominican superior, Fr. Donald Goergen,
O.P., wrote a detailed defense on Fox's behalf and let him go on.
    In September, 1987 Ratzinger's Vatican office began its own
investigation of Fox and his teachings. Fr. Goergen received charges
against Fox in April, 1988, but claimed that Fox's theological views
had not been disproven. At this point the Vatican insisted that the
Dominicans prevent Fox from further teaching and writing. Accordingly,
the Master General asked Fox to take a one year sabbatical to calm the
situation. In a "Pastoral Letter to Cardinal Ratzinger and the Whole
Church," Fox responded by publicly calling the Catholic church a
dysfunctional family because "power, not theology, is the real issue."
Still, he began a year-long silence on December 15, 1988.
    On December 15, 1989, Fox resumed his busy teaching, lecturing,
and writing schedule -- including appearances at John Denver's (New
Age) Windstar Foundation and an Easter retreat at Findhorn, Scotland
(a prototype New Age community). In 1991 Fr. Goergen ordered Fox to
leave the ICCS in California and return to Chicago or face dismissal
from the Dominican order. Fox refused, and at the time of this writing
his dismissal awaits only the Vatican's formal approval. If dismissed,
Fox would remain a priest, but would be forbidden to perform the
sacraments.
    Fox continues to have tremendous influence -- both within and
outside the Catholic church. Recently CNN International featured him
as a theologian speaking for the environment. His books are used by
nuns, are found at Catholic retreat houses, and are distributed in
bookstores -- religious and New Age alike. Influenced by Fox, some nuns
include wicca (witchcraft) ceremonies in their rituals and
celebrations, breaking the hearts of believing Catholics who witness
it. Creation spirituality (see glossary) is taught to young children,
neglecting the doctrines of sin and redemption, but starting classes
with a "Pledge of Allegiance to the Earth."
-------------
Glossary

    *Carl Jung:* (1875-1961) A Swiss psychologist and one-time
associate of Sigmund Freud who founded a school of "depth psychology."
He was interested in myth and religion, but personally believed in
alchemy, the occult, and pantheism.
    *creation spirituality:* Matthew Fox's name for his religious
ap-proach. Its starting point and focus is on creation, which is
identified with God and the Cosmic Christ. He sets it in opposition to
belief in man's fall into sin and Christ's redemption.
    *panentheism:* The belief that God is in everything and everything
is in God.
    *cosmic:* Fox uses this to mean the whole universe, with its laws
of harmony and wholeness and its beauty.
    *Cosmic Christ:* Though Fox affirms belief in the historical
Jesus, he considers the Cosmic Christ to be a "third nature" in
addition to the divine and human natures. By saying it is the "I AM"
in every creature, the Cosmic Christ is identified with creation. The
earth is called the Cosmic Christ.
    *cosmology:* For Fox, the study of the cosmos or universe, with a
focus on a new paradigm based on Einstein's physics rather than
Newton's. It brings together science, mysticism, and art, and tries to
do away with all dualism.

-------------
    In 1989, Reverend Lawrence Krause -- a graduate of the American
Baptist Seminary in Covina, California, and ordained by the Covenant
Church -- started the New Creation Fellowship and Renewal Center in La
Mesa, California. This appears to be a New Age denomination inspired
by Fox's ideas.
    In this article, I shall examine Fox's teachings in some detail,
focusing primarily on his world view and his view of God and Christ. I
shall then examine Fox's reliability as a scholar, for if his
scholarship can be shown to be faulty, then everything he teaches and
writes becomes suspect.


FOX'S WORLD VIEW

    Two questions in the introduction to Fox's book Original Blessing
provide an important insight into his world view:
        1. In our quest for wisdom and survival, does the
        human race require a new religious paradigm [model]?
        2. Does the creation-centered spiritual tradition
        offer such a paradigm?
        As the reader may guess, my answer to both these
        questions is: yes.[1]


A New Paradigm

    Like many New Agers, Fox borrows the idea of a "paradigm shift"
from Dr. Thomas Kuhn, a historian of science. Kuhn describes how
people make models or paradigms of the universe to direct their
interpretation of its events. Science often shapes the basic paradigms
by which people view reality. Sometimes scientific discoveries so
severely affect the old paradigms that they are abandoned for new and
more useful ones.
    Such a paradigm shift occurred when science changed from the
mechanistic idea of the universe, which is associated with Sir Isaac
Newton, to Albert Einstein's world of relativity. Newton interpreted
the universe as a huge mechanical system that operates according to
predictable, immutable laws (such as the law of gravity). His paradigm
compartmentalized the world into discrete entities -- distinct
constituent parts of the larger mechanism.
    Buckminster Fuller, Matthew Fox, and many others claim that the
new Einsteinian paradigm has not yet been accepted in place of the
Newtonian paradigm. Once it is, they say, a completely new way of
viewing the world will dominate. This new paradigm is one that will
link humanity with all creation, and will emphasize the
interconnectedness of all things. In other words, a "wholeness"
paradigm will replace Newton's mechanistic paradigm.
    Fox is an evangelist of the inevitable new scientific, religious,
and philosophical paradigm. Evidently, he wants to incorporate
Christian theology and spiritual traditions into this new paradigm.
For Fox, it is important to note, Christian ideas do not have priority
over the new paradigm. Rather, Christianity must change to fit the new
ideas. If the church does not adapt and lead the new way of thinking,
"Mother Earth" will die, taking everyone down with her. How, then,
must the church change, according to Fox?
    To recover the wisdom that is lurking in religious traditions we
have to let go of more recent religious traditions....
Specifically,...an exclusively fall/redemption model of
spirituality....It [the fall/redemption model] is a dualistic model
[separating the sacred and profane] and a patriarchal [father
oriented, male dominated] one; it begins its theology with sin and
original sin, and it generally ends with redemption. Fall/redemption
spirituality does not teach believers about the New Creation or
creativity, about justice-making and social transformation, or about
Eros, play, pleasure and the God of delight.[2]
    Fox identifies St. Augustine and his theology of humanity's fall
into sin and need for redemption as the prime culprit behind today's
problems. Wars (especially the threat of nuclear war), ecological
crises, boredom, unemployment, and the rest of modern woes go back to
St. Augustine's idea that people are born with original sin in their
souls. Fall/redemption theology leads to "sentimentalism and
fundamentalism," focusing on personal salvation and a personal
savior.[3] As a result, Fox says, people have "no ego, no
self-respect, no tolerance for diversity, no love of creation, no
sense of humor, [and] no sense of sexual identity or joy."[4]
    Frequently, as is typical with New Agers, Fox's books decry
society's and the church's emphasis on the brain's left hemisphere,
with its analytic, verbal, logical processes. Fox wants people to
incorporate the right hemisphere of the brain, with its emotion,
connection making, mysticism, cosmic delight, and orientation toward
the maternal, silence, and darkness.
    Fox believes his new paradigm will awaken the world to the cosmic.
Instead of Christ redeeming us from sin, Christ Himself  becomes
cosmic, liberating everyone from the "bondage and pessimistic news of
a Newtonian, mechanistic universe so ripe with competition...
dualisms, anthropocentrism, and...boredom."[5] Fox's translation of
Meister Eckhart (a thirteenth century German mystic) says that all
persons are "meant to be mothers of God" and everyone is called to
give birth to the Cosmic Christ within themselves and society.[6]
Then, with St. Hildegard of Bingen (a twelfth century Benedictine
abbess), Eckhart, and psychologist Carl Jung, everyone will know
themselves to be "divine and human, animal and demon. We are Cosmic
Christs."[7]

    Fox also identifies Christ with Mother Earth. For him, Christ's
redemption takes on new meaning and power in the Cosmic Christ context
if people see it as the "passion, resurrection, and ascension of
Mother Earth conceived as Jesus Christ crucified, resurrected, and
ascended."[8] Holy Communion is "intimate," "local," and "erotic" when
it becomes "the eating and drinking of the wounded earth."[9]
    A key aspect of the new paradigm is Fox's idealization of feminist
theology and rejection of patriarchal (father oriented) religion. He
advocates a return to maternal (mother oriented) religion, like that
of native peoples throughout the world. Their "matrifocal
[mother-centered] religion" helps them reverence God as a mother, the
earth as our mother, the universe as our grandmother. They care for
earth, he declares, and seek justice, compassion, creativity, and
harmony among people and within the ecology. He preaches this
religious ideal as the new paradigm of "deep ecumenism," which will
allow people of all religions to come together at a mystical level.


Is Fox a New Ager?

    Is Fox a New Ager? On the one hand, he freely employs New Age
ideas -- for example, he sets Newton against Einstein, the right brain
against the left, and mysticism as the basis of religion, not dogma.
He quotes New Age thinkers such as Fritjof Capra, Buckminster Fuller,
and Gregory Bateson. He suggests that the "contemporary mystical
movement known as 'new age' can dialogue and create with creation
spiritual tradition."[10]
    On the other hand, Fox criticizes New Age "pseudo-mysticisms" such
as interpreting "'past life experiences' in an excessively literal way
without considering the possible metaphorical meanings." Dealing with
"past lives," he allows, is an acceptable technique of "working out --
often in a very commendable and creative way -- the deep suffering and
pain from [people's] present life."[11] While Fox's interpretation of
past life reading is not New Age, his endorsement of the practice,
probably from a Jungian point of view, is unacceptable to Scripture
and Catholic teaching.
    Fox criticizes other New Age trends which are: "all space and no
time; all consciousness and no conscience; all mysticism and no
prophecy; all past life experiences, angelic encounters, untold bliss,
and no critique of injustice or acknowledgment of the suffering and
death that the toll of time takes. In short, no body. To these
movements the Cosmic Christ says, 'Enter time. Behold my wounds. Love
your neighbor. Set the captives free.'"[12]
    Again, Fox does not reject New Age practices; he simply wants them
balanced by social justice, conscience, and concern for the physical
world. He prophesies in the name of the Cosmic Christ that New Agers
should love their neighbors and do justice. New Agers would probably
agree (many New Age thinkers and activists, such as Capra, have raised
the same concerns) and merrily go to a conference on saving the
environment, crystals, or channeling.
    Fox's analysis, however, is inadequate because he does not reject
the occult practices of the New Age movement. Commending witchcraft
and shamanism (primitive spiritism) in his Institute encourages
disciples to investigate the occult in the guise of learning the ways
of "matrifocal" (mother-centered) primitive religions in order to
awaken the compassionate and creative mother in everyone.
    In Scripture, God calls us to be compassionate, loving, and
thirsty for justice. At the same time, however, He condemns the occult
practices of native Canaanite religion, its mother goddesses Anath and
Ashtarte, and its demand for human sacrifices (Deut. 18:9-14).
Furthermore, Starhawk's wiccan religion of the goddess is explicitly
pantheistic (all is God) and monistic (all is one).[13] This causes
one to wonder whether Fox's frequent commendations of Starhawk's work
in reawakening the goddess religion mean that he accepts pantheism
after all. Honesty requires him to state his true relationship to
Starhawk's wiccan theology: is he pantheistic or not?
    Fox even affirms a qualified belief in the astrological ages, as
affirmed by Jung and New Agers. Fox calls astrology a "tradition that
offers us a glimpse into our own futures," but in the same section he
emphatically states, "What I present here is not my personal belief in
astrology (I do not believe in astrology) but a method of seeing the
human consciousness historically, where historical means both past and
future."[14]
    For Fox, astrology is a "symbolic method of seeing our futures"
that "might have a valuable insight." Jung defends this view "by
arguing that astrological wisdom is significant for what it tells us
of the contents of our spiritual unconscious and, as such, needs to be
taken very seriously."[15] Then Fox recounts Jung's description of
2,000 year-long stages in human history: the bull (Taurus), from 4,000
to 2,000 B.C. -- representing "primitive, instinctual civilizations";
the ram (Aries), from 2,000 B.C. to A.D. 1 -- characterized by Judaism,
conscience, and awareness of evil; the age of the fishes (Pisces),
from A.D. 1 to 1997 -- "dominated religiously by the figure of Christ."
The symbol of the two fish swimming in opposite directions "implies a
dualistic spirituality that has so characterized Christian thinking
and, in particular, Christian mysticism. It implies a Christ vs.
anti-Christ tension."[16]
    Fox claims that the Piscean Age ends at the end of the twentieth
century "according to this theory, and if there is some truth to it,"
the Age of Aquarius is opening soon. It will be characterized by the
symbol of water and "the deep," but he does not explain the
significance of this further. In the New Age, "evil will be made
conscious to every individual who may in turn be made truly spiritual
and responsible." Individuals will have experiences of "the living
spirit" in this spiritual age "where both the spirits of ugliness
(evil) and of beauty (God) will be available to every person to choose
in his own way."[17] He says it will also be an age of
"reincarnation," not in the sense of transmigration of souls, which he
rejects, but of restoring the sensual and incarnate sense again (i.e.,
people will have a positive experience of getting back in touch with
their bodies).[18] Fox foresees a changed church in the Age of
Aquarius, too: "Sensual sacraments and liturgies, church leaders and
schools, life-styles and working conditions -- there lies the
re-incarnational church for a post-Piscean Age."[19]
    The New Age movement gets its name from its belief that society
will soon be transformed (many expect this around the turn of the
millennium). This belief motivates many people to support the movement
because the changes are proclaimed as inevitable and irreversible.
Since no one can stop the inexorable advance into the Age of Aquarius,
it is reasoned, it makes more sense to join it than fight it. Fox too
is convinced that the old Piscean Age, with its dualistic,
Augustinian, Newtonian world view, is dead.[20]
    I suspect that, like New Agers, Fox motivates himself and others
to change their ideology and theology because he is convinced that a
new, Aquarian Age is upon the world and the church. However, what if
he is wrong? What if 1997 does not usher in the Age of Aquarius as he
claims? Christianity has weathered many dramatic upheavals in society
-- from the destruction of Israel in A.D. 70, through the collapse of
the Roman Empire, the French Revolution, and the atheistic
persecutions of the Marxists and Nazis. The church, the beloved Bride
of Jesus Christ, will survive until He returns for her, through the
period New Agers call the Age of Aquarius and beyond.
    Fox does the world and the church a disservice by not teaching the
whole Scripture and by accepting only parts. The Greek word for heresy
means taking parts out of the whole. While Fox's love of creation and
its God-given goodness is commendable, his new paradigm is not. It
becomes a vehicle by which Christians are ushered into the New Age
movement.


FOX'S TEACHING ON GOD AND CHRIST

    A central element in the New Age movement is belief in pantheism,
the idea that God is everything and everything is God. Where does
Fox's doctrine of God and Christ place him? Although he seeks to avoid
this conclusion, his views on these all-important subjects belong in
the New Age category.
    Fox explicitly rejects pantheism as a heresy that removes God's
transcendence and makes the sacraments impossible.[21] Instead, he
holds to panentheism, which teaches that "everything is in God and God
is in everything." This idea has its home in the late Neo-Platonism (a
mystical philosophy which combined ideas from Plato with Oriental,
Jewish, and Christian beliefs) of the Middle Ages, especially as
represented by John Erigena, Nicholas of Cusa, and Meister Eckhart.
Because Fox does not like Platonism, he dubs these Neo-Platonists
"creation-centered theologians."
    All three philosophers came under church scrutiny and condemnation
because their explicit claims of panentheism (which is bad enough,
since it holds that the creation is inherently divine) masked an
implicit pantheism. Fox has the same problem. His quotation of
Nicholas of Cusa sounds like pantheism, though he calls it
panentheism:
    The absolute, Divine Mind, is all that is in everything that
is....Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is.
Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in
divinity....
    We are, as it were, a human deity. Humans are also the universe,
but not absolutely since we are human. Humanity is therefore a
microcosm, or in truth, a human universe. Thus humanity itself
encloses both God and the universe in its human power.[22]
    Fox frequently quotes his version of Meister Eckhart:
        The seed of God is in us....Now the seed of a pear tree
        grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree,
        the seed of God into God.[23]
        I discover that God and I are one. There I am what I was,
        and I grow neither smaller nor bigger, for there I am an
        immovable cause that moves all things.[24]
    These and similar passages throughout Fox's books manifest an
understanding of Christ and divinity rooted in Fox's translations and
imagination rather than Scripture or church teaching. Sounding
remarkably like New Agers Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the
Church Universal and Triumphant, Fox wants people to "birth" their own
"I am," which is the experience of the divine "I am." The reason for
our existence, Fox tells us, is to "birth the Cosmic Christ in our
being and doing."[25] Fox believes that everyone can and should give
birth to the Cosmic Christ, which he believes will awaken the maternal
within us.
    Fox's Cosmic Christ sounds pantheistic and not at all like Jesus,
the only begotten Son of God. He writes, "The divine name from Exodus
3:14, 'I Am who I Am,' is appropriated by Jesus who shows us how to
embrace our own divinity. The Cosmic Christ is the I am in every
creature."[26] Again Fox sounds like the Church Universal and
Triumphant, claiming that Jesus appropriated His divinity and we can
do the same. This makes Jesus no more divine than we are, as New Agers
teach.
    Fox tells us to "let go of the quest for the historical Jesus and
embark on a quest for the Cosmic Christ."[27] Yet he does not want
Cosmic Christ theology to be believed or lived "at the expense of the
historical Jesus" (emphasis in original).[28] Fox seeks a dialectic or
interchange of ideas between the historical and the cosmic so as to
incorporate the prophetic and the mystical. This requires a conversion
from a "personal Savior" Christianity, which is "anthropocentric and
antimystical," to a "Cosmic Christ" Christianity.[29]
    Which of Fox's statements do we believe? He is confusing and
contradictory. Perhaps he emphasizes the need for using the right side
of the brain (with its intuition, mysticism, and freedom from
dualistic, either/or thinking and the limitations of logic) because of
his own illogic. For many New Agers, the emphasis on right brain
nonthinking is the perfect defense against logic, communication of
ideas, the expertise of other people, and common sense. Fox's thinking
mixes New Age ideas and clichÄs with his own faulty translations of
old treatises from the fringes of Christianity, as I will now
demonstrate.


FOX'S FAULTY SCHOLARSHIP

    While Fox's extensive interests and background include late
Neo-Platonist philosophy, Medieval spirituality, and ecology, his
scholarship is sloppy and embarrassing. He betrays the trust placed by
nonspecialists that scholars do their homework.
    I first noticed difficulties with Fox's use of Scripture, my own
area of expertise. He mistranslates texts and misrepresents linguistic
findings to support his theological bias. For instance, he writes:
"The word for 'mountain' in Hebrew also means 'the Almighty' and it
comes from the word for breast. Mountains are the breasts of Mother
Earth, thus 'Come! Play on my mountain of myrrh.'"[30]
    This is a confused batch of misinformation. "Mountain" in Hebrew
is har; the name "God Almighty" comes from the Akkadian word, El
Shaddai; "breast" in Hebrew is shad, from the root shadah, which is
not the root of Shaddai (shadad is). While a slight error if it were
alone, Fox is mixing and matching etymologies irresponsibly to make a
feminist point, though one that is nonexistent in Hebrew.
    Another example occurs in his comments on the Song of Songs (or
Song of Solomon):
        [The male lover in Song of Solomon] invokes the earth
        goddesses in this charge; this man is not out of touch
        with the pre-patriarchal spirituality:
        I tell you O young ones of the holy city:
        Do not arouse my lover before her time.
        I charge you by the "spirits and the goddesses of the
        field," by the gazelles and the hinds: Do not disturb
        my love while she is at rest. (2:7; 3:5; 8:4)[31]
    Fox's translation and comments are faulty. The Hebrew has no
reference to spirits and goddesses but rather reads:
        I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem:
        by the gazelles and by the hinds of the field:
        Do not awaken, do not stir up love until she pleases. (2:7)
    The Hebrew word "gazelles" is sebaoth, similar to "hosts" in the
name "Lord of Hosts" (Lord Sabaoth). The Greek Septuagint translates
this word in Song of Songs 2:7 as "by the powers and forces of the
field." The Aramaic Targum has "by the Lord of Hosts and by the
Strength of the land of Israel." Paul Jouon, S.J., a French Hebraist,
considered this an allusion to the armies of angels and their leaders,
but the majority of scholars see them as words for gazelles and
deer,[32] not as references to earth goddesses.
    Fox also abuses Hebrew etymology in claiming "the Hebrew word for
blessing, berakah, is closely related to the word for create,
bara....The word for covenant, beriyth, is also directly related to
the words for 'create' and for 'blessing.'"[33] This is utter
nonsense, on a par with claiming that "carpet" originally meant dogs
driving automobiles. No etymological connection exists among these
Hebrew words. Covenants and creation may be blessings, but Fox bases
his point on a false premise.
    In another place Fox makes an erroneous claim about the Hebrew
language to support an equally erroneous statement about God: "The
with-ness of God is especially significant because, while Greeks focus
on nouns in their literature, Jews focus on prepositions such as with,
against, from, etc. The Covenant is a sign of God's withness. To be
without covenant would be unbearable for the Jewish believer. God,
then, is a preposition for the Jew. And the preposition is basically
one of presence, of with-ness."[34]
    In fact, the Hebrew language does not focus on prepositions but on
verbs, usually in the form of what Hebrew grammarians call triliteral
roots. The prepositions are substantives derived from verbs. The words
meaning "God" are not prepositions, nor are they derived from
prepositions. It is absurd to call God a preposition.
    Elsewhere Fox mistranslates Greek words that are not even in the
New Testament! He writes of "the counsel of Jesus to his friends
(substituting the word 'culture' for kenosis) when he declared that
they be 'in the culture but not of it.'"[35] First, the Greek word
kenosis (meaning "emptying") does not appear anywhere in the New
Testament. Why does Fox bother to mistranslate it? Second, the saying
of Jesus which he reinterprets here is apparently John 17:16, "They
[the disciples] are not of the world [ek tou kosmou] as I am not of
the world [ek tou kosmou]." Perhaps Fox did not want to inform his
readers that neither Jesus nor His friends were "of the cosmos," a key
word in Foxian thought.
    Serious problems arise from Fox's translation of John 1:1-5, 9,
10, 12, and 14, where he uses the impersonal sounding words "Creative
Energy" to translate the Greek word logos (usually translated as
"word"). The word "energy" is simply unacceptable as a translation of
logos. Further, instead of the personal pronoun "he" (present in
Greek), Fox uses "it" to refer to the Word eleven times, though he
calls "it" the "Child of the Creator." Fox's depersonalization of the
Word made flesh makes Christ an impersonal energy. More evidence of a
depersonalizing tendency appears in a quote of thirteenth century
saint and mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg: "From the very beginning God
loved us. The Holy Trinity gave itself in the creation of all things
and made us, body and soul, in infinite love" (emphasis added).[36]
    Fox also misrepresents the way Christians have allegorized the
Song of Songs, saying that they read "into the Jewish tradition a
dualism between body and soul and an alien original sin mentality that
are not there."[37] However, it was the rabbinic tradition that first
allegorized the Song of Songs. Had Rabbi Aqiba not insisted on an
allegorical interpretation of the Song, the rabbis would not have kept
it in their Scripture canon. Christians simply continued the Jewish
tradition of allegorizing the Song, though they adapted it to their
understanding of Christ and the church.
    Training in Hebrew and Greek helped me catch all the above errors,
but I am not an expert in Medieval literature. When I asked
Medievalists about Fox's work, they noted its defective and dishonest
qualities.
    Dr. Barbara Newman, an expert on St. Hildegard of Bingen at
Northwestern University, is skeptical of Fox's work on St. Hildegard.
In a footnote she says of Gabrielle Uhlein's Meditations with
Hildegard of Bingen and Fox's Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen
that the "so-called translations in these volumes are not to be
trusted."[38] Newman's review of Fox's edition of Hildegard of
Bingen's Book of Divine Works, with Letters and Songs says: "The
present book, like earlier Hildegard volumes from this press [Bear &
Company], raises serious questions about the editor's integrity."[39]
It is not a translation from Hildegard's original Latin version but is
from a German abridgment, which Fox erroneously calls "a critical
text." One wonders why Fox did not use the original texts.
    Newman says the introductions in Fox's volume are "rife with
errors about Hildegard's work," such as the false idea that she
founded monasteries for men or administered a small kingdom. Instead
of the feminist portrayed by Fox and company, Hildegard "firmly
defended social hierarchies, and believed in divinely ordained gender
roles," called God Father and Son, and used masculine pronouns for
God.[40] Neither was Hildegard a creation-centered theologian, as Fox
claims: "Hildegard's teaching is not creation centered at all; it
centers on the Incarnation...."[41] Newman concludes her review by
saying, "the wholesale misrepresentations that Bear & Company engage
in cannot, in the long run, serve the cause of human integrity by
purveying historical fallacies."[42]
    Another critic is Simon Tugwell, O.P., who reviewed Matthew Fox's
Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New
Translation in the Dominican journal, New Blackfriars. Tugwell,
proficient in Eckhart's thought and in Middle High German language,
thoroughly exposes Fox's poor scholarship.
    First, Tugwell says Fox's translation is poor quality. Instead of
using the Middle High German of Eckhart's original, Fox chose Quint's
modern German translation of the original. Why did Fox not use the
original language? Tugwell goes on to say that Fox inaccurately
translates Quint's text with "an extraordinary number of mistakes." At
times Fox does not understand the syntax; at times he does not know
the meanings of words. But, Tugwell says, "sometimes it is difficult
to avoid the feeling that the mistranslation is deliberate, intended
to minimize anything that would interfere with the alleged
'creation-centeredness' of Eckhart's spirituality."[43]
    Tugwell says the historical introduction in this book "is so
dominated by wishful thinking and sheer fantasy that the reviewer
hardly knows how to begin criticizing it."[44] When Fox alleged Celtic
influence on Eckhart, Tugwell found himself reduced to "helpless,
gibbering fury." He accuses Fox of "tendentious half-truths,
or...downright falsehood." For instance, Fox claims Eckhart was a
feminist influenced by the beguine movement (semi-monastic sisterhoods
going back to twelfth century Holland), but in fact no reliable
evidence exists for either assertion. Also, Fox calls Eckhart, a
Dominican, "the most Franciscan spiritual theologian of the church"
because he rejected the dualist thoughts of Platonist philosophers. In
fact, St. Francis was clearly dualistic because he said that the soul
lives in the body "like a hermit in a hermitage" and called the body
and soul "both men" inside the person. Fox ignores this dualism in St.
Francis, whom Fox has dubbed "creation-centered." In short, then,
Tugwell caught Fox committing significant errors.
    Unfortunately, the appeal and use of Fox's pseudotranslations are
widespread. An American scholar visiting Norwich, England stopped at a
gift shop, and the racks displayed all the Bear & Company
translations. When the visitor explained how faulty and inaccurate
these translations were, the clerk gushed, "That all may be true, but
Fr. Fox has been such a help to my spiritual life."
    Why are the above criticisms significant for understanding Fox and
creation-centered spirituality? First, they throw the rest of his
scholarship into question. I certainly do not trust his biblical
scholarship; neither do a Hildegard of Bingen scholar and a Meister
Eckhart scholar trust his translations and commentaries. Experts find
Fox committing so many dumb mistakes that he is either full of
malarkey or, as some (including myself) suspect, is deliberately
deceitful. Since Fox has repeatedly betrayed his trust as a scholar,
why should he be trusted as an authority on religious matters?
    Second, Fox constructs much of his creation-centered theology from
his own translations of Hildegard and Eckhart. His faulty translations
support a crumbly theological edifice. Scholars can show that neither
Sacred Scripture, St. Hildegard, St. Francis, nor even Meister Eckhart
are to blame for Fox's peculiar theology. He must bear full
responsibility (and culpability) for this abominable approach to
"spirituality."


IS ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY DYING?

    Not all of Fox's concerns are wrong headed. Christians need to
show more love for creation and the environment. Growth in compassion
and creativity (in the analogous sense by which we creatures can be
creative) is a laudable goal. As well, passion for justice and concern
for the poor are biblical characteristics. Yet none of these requires
us to abandon the faith handed on to us by the apostles. We need not
accept Fox's view that "the Church as we have known it is dying,"[45]
or that "Christianity as we know it will not survive for we know it
now in wineskins that are brittle, old and leaking."[46] Christ Jesus,
truth incarnate, will renew the church and bring many people to
salvation  through union with Him. We can depend on that.
    Matthew Fox has invented a creation-centered theology that tries
to see everything in God and God in everything. His Cosmic Christ is
especially in the earth, and he would have us all learn to find this
Christ in ourselves and in the world. Clearly, Fox's theology distorts
historic Christianity into a crypto-New Age system that leads people
away from the real Christ of Scripture. The warning of St. Paul is
well-suited for this modern-day wolf in clerical clothing: "See to it
that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit,
according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of
the universe [Greek: kosmos], and not according to Christ. For in him
the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to
fullness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority"
(Col. 2:8-10, RSV).

-------------

Father Mitchell Pacwa, S.J., is a Scripture scholar from Loyola
University at Chicago.

-------------

NOTES
1 Matthew Fox, O.P., Original Blessing (Santa Fe, NM: Bear and
Company, 1983), 9.
2 Ibid., 10-11.
3 Matthew Fox, O.P., The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1988),  151.
4 Ibid., 182.
5 Ibid., 135.
6 Ibid., 137.
7 Ibid., 138.
8 Ibid., 149.
9 Ibid., 214.
10 Fox, Original Blessing, 16.
11 Fox, Cosmic Christ, 45-46.
12 Ibid., 141.
13 Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of
the Goddess, 10 th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Updated (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 10-11, 22, 23, 27.
14 Matthew Fox, WHEE! We, wee All the Way Home: A Guide to the New
Sensual Spirituality (Wilmington, NC: A Consortium Book, 1976), ii.
15 Ibid. Unfortunately, though Randy England's Unicorn in the
Sanctuary (Manassas, VA: Trinity Communications, 1990), 122, quotes
Fox's statement about astrological ages rather extensively, he omits
Fox's denial of belief in astrology. England should have been more
fair and directed the criticism more pointedly.
16 Fox, WHEE!, ii-iii.
17 Ibid., iii.
18 Ibid., 183.
19 Ibid., 196.
20 Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion and the Healing of the
Global Village, Humpty Dumpty and Us (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1979), 256.
21 Fox, Original Blessing, 90.
22 Fox, Cosmic Christ, 126.
23 Ibid., 121.
24 Ibid., 154.
25 Ibid., 155.
26 Ibid., 154.
27 Ibid., 8.
28 Ibid., 79.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 169.
31 Ibid., 170.
32 Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction
and Commentary, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company,
1977), 385-86.
33 Fox, Original Blessing, 46.
34 Ibid. Here Fox cites a lecture by Dr. Ron Miller at ICCS, Mundelein
College, Chicago, 18 January 1982.
35 Matthew Fox, O.P., On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear (New York:
Harper and Row, Publishers, 1972), 66.
36 Fox, Original Blessing, 48.
37 Ibid., 62.
38 Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the
Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 250n.
39 Barbara Newman, review of Matthew Fox, ed., Hildegard of Bingen's
Book of Divine Works, with Letters and Songs," Church History 54
(1985), 190.
40 Ibid., 191.
41 Newman, Sister, 250.
42 Newman, review, 192.
43 Simon Tugwell, O.P., review of Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's
Creation Spirituality in New Translation, Introduction and
Commentaries by Matthew Fox, New Blackfriars 63 (1982), 197.
44 Ibid.
45 Fox, Cosmic Christ, 31.
46 Ibid., 149.


End of document, CRJ0001B.TXT (original CRI file name),
"Catholicism for the New Age: Matthew Fox and Creation-Centered
Spirituality"

This file was first made available as CR001J11.TXT, release 1.1,
February 19, 1993.  Later it was given the name CRJ0001A.TXT after
an early revision of CRI's file name convention.

Update B, March 26, 1993, R. Poll, CRI
    The preceding article was adapted from a chapter in Pacwa's book
_Catholics And The New Age_ available from Servant Press, Ann
Arbor, Michigan.
    In a phone conversation yesterday Pacwa suggested that I pass on
the news that Fox has been "kicked out of his order" since this
article was first published.

(A special note of thanks to Bob and Pat Hunter for their help in
the preparation of this ASCII file for BBS circulation.)

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