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

Copyright 1993 by the Christian Research Institute.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
COPYRIGHT/REPRODUCTION LIMITATIONS:
 
This data file is the sole property of the Christian Research 
Institute.  It may not be altered or edited in any way.  It may be 
reproduced only in its entirety for circulation as "freeware," without 
charge.  All reproductions of this data file must contain the 
copyright notice (i.e., "Copyright 1993 by the Christian Research 
Institute").  This data file may not be used without the permission of 
the Christian Research Institute for resale or the enhancement of any 
other product sold.  This includes all of its content with the 
exception of a few brief quotations not to exceed more than 500 words.
 
If you desire to reproduce less than 500 words of this data file for 
resale or the enhancement of any other product for resale, please give 
the following source credit:  Copyright 1993 by the Christian Research 
Institute, P.O. Box 500, San Juan Capistrano, CA  92693.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
    "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 clichs 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.)
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
YOURS FOR THE ASKING
The Christian Research Institute (CRI) -- founded in 1960 by the late 
Dr. Walter R. Martin -- is a clearing house for current, in-depth 
information on new religious movements and aberrant Christian 
teachings.  We provide well-reasoned, carefully-researched answers to 
concepts and ideas that challenge orthodox Christianity.
 
Did you know that CRI has a wealth of information on various topics 
that is yours for the asking?  We offer a wide variety of articles and 
fact sheets free of charge.  Write us today for information on these 
or other topics.  Our first-rate research staff will do everything 
possible to help you.
 
Christian Research Institute
P.O. Box 500
San Juan Capistrano, CA  92693
 
 
---------------
 
End of file.
                                                         