The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
By Gianluigi Gugliermetto 2/04/2025 |
As a theologian, I am interested in “God” and everything thereunto connected. No surprise here. I am supposed to articulate a discourse (logos, from which the desinence -logian) about the divinity (theos = God). And I do that a lot, sometimes in ways that are surprising to the people I talk to. |
One time I was delivering a paper at an historians’ meeting which dealt with 3rd century Christian writers from a purely historical perspective. Once the people there assembled understood that I was not primarily an historian, but a theologian, they perked up from their slumber and one of them asked with |
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incredulity: Do you really think about God as an existing reality? Well, it depends what do you mean by ‘existing’, I answered. They were undeterred. They became even more curious — at least some of them — and a lively conversation ensued. When speaking in my capacity as a theologian, I
always have to remember that the great majority of my interlocutors is projecting all sorts of things on the name “God.” Many take for granted that their notion of God is the correct one, whether they happen to believe in God’s “existence” or not. And when such a notion derives from their social context, without any personal engagement with it, the conversation becomes awkward. Almost always, my problem is that I don’t agree on the premises of the conversation, that is, on the definition of God that is assumed. And when I state that I even have a problem with the fact that God can be defined, we often reach a stalemate. Sometimes I look stupid, I know. Decades of studies about
“something” that perhaps cannot even be defined. My escape route is to say that I study people’s religious experiences as historically constructed and manifested — which is true but it also circumvents the issue. |
Book cover of Matthew Fox’s book: Naming the Unnameable. | In the last fifty years or so, there have been in the academy several people who have offered solutions to my embar- rassment. We have “atheologies” and “post-theism” for example. I have a lot of respect for all serious academic pursuits, but I feel that such solutions are not cutting through at all. I feel stuck with God. Partly because it is God, and none other, that is being pulled and pushed to justify all kinds of political and moral systems. Partly because so many mystics |
belonging to my own tradition have defined their lives as a quest for the living God, a desire for God, and so on and so forth. |
Matthew Fox has offered a very practical and non-academic way to look at the issue in his precious little book Naming the Unnamablee: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God… Including the Unnameable God. The following is an excerpt from the book: Meister Eckhart says God is the
“Ineffable One” and the “Unnameable.” God is “without a name and is the denial of all names and has never been given a name—a truly hidden God.” Such a teaching allows us all to relax and to cease projecting and certainly to cease going to war against one another “in the name” of whatever God we do or do not worship. (Atheists too can get stuck and overly attached to the name “God.” Recently I heard this joke: “What I most dislike about atheists is that they are so busy talking about god all the
time.”) |
Who is this, what is this, that is without a name and whom we can never name? This “It” must be quite amazing because we humans are great at naming everything and anything that comes our way—but we need to cease naming and projecting when it comes to Divinity. How eager we are to seize
and to hold and to name and to categorize and to box up into concepts and then rules and then doctrines and then dogmas. But Whoa! Stop! This “God” thing does not yield to such human control compulsions. “God” is the one without a name who will |
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never be given a name. Just being. And non-being. And silence. And…. Words fail us in the face of mystery. As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, “We know the Holy Spirit as energy and not as notions and words.” This is why our deepest feelings and experiences turn us to art and music and
dance and silence in response to the Ineffable One. |
Queries for Contemplation How relevant do you think it is to talk about God in our troubled times? What
kind of conversation would ensue if what Matthew says in this page is taken as the point of departure? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, or read other comments and enter into dialogue, please click HERE to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. Books and More by Matthew and Friends! Be sure to check out Matthew's new store at MatthewFox.org, now offering books, recorded courses old and new, and special events... and don't miss our growing collection of books endorsed by Matthew on Bookshop.org! CREATION SPIRITUALITY CONVERSATIONS |
Podcaster Jon Wilson speaks with Matthew Fox about Creation Spirituality: how Matthew became a Dominican priest; his studies in Paris, Original Blessing versus the Fall-Redemption tradition; the Four Paths; mystics Meister Eckhart, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank; Eros, ritual and how ‘this is
wisdom to love life’. Listen HERE. |
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Join Matthew Fox for a Lecture, Discussion, and Q&A on “Manifesto! For a Global Civilization; & Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality, ” an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, Thursday, February 19, 2026, 4:00pm-5:30pm PT. Register HERE. |
Join Matthew Fox in a free 4-session Online Lecture/Discussion/Q&A event, “Creation Spirituality and the Celebrating & Healing of Mother Earth & Ourselves,” co-presented by the Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin and Matthew Fox Legacy Project. Wednesdays, January 14, 21,28, February 4, 2026, 4:00pm-5:30pm
PT January 14 - Creation as an Original Blessing and the Springboard of Awe and Wonder January 21 - Sacred Mother Earth: The Holiness of Creation and Recovering the Cosmic Christ January 28 - The Cosmic Mass, and the Stations of the Cosmic Christ: Reinvigorating Liturgy and Rituals February 4 - Jesus as a Teacher of Democracy and the Renewal of Education and Values through the “10 Cs” Register HERE |
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