His holistic pedagogy included among its faculty Jungian psychologist John Giannini, physicist/cosmologist Brian Swimme, feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, along with many artists teaching "art as meditation."
[3] In 1984 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — asked the Dominican Order to investigate Fox's writings.
[6] On March 31, 1991, Fox made an extended appearance on the British television discussion program After Dark, alongside Piltdown Man debunker Teddy Hall; secular humanist activist Barbara Smoker; theologian N. T. Wright; playwright Hyam Maccoby (who theorized that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew and Messianic claimant); author Ian Wilson (known chiefly for speculative writing on the Shroud of Turin); and others.
In 1993, Fox's conflicts with Catholic authorities climaxed with his expulsion from the Dominican Order for "disobedience", effectively ending his professional relationship with the church and his teaching at its universities.
Among the issues Ratzinger objected to were his feminist theology; calling God "Mother"; preferring the concept of Original Blessing over Original Sin; not condemning homosexual behavior; and teaching the four paths of creation spirituality – the Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa — instead of the church's classical three paths of purgation, illumination and union.
[7] According to John L. Allen, Jr., it was largely in reaction to the unconventional programming at ICCS, with a faculty that included a masseuse, a Zen Buddhist, a yoga teacher, and Starhawk, a feminist Wiccan.
He was inspired to begin holding his own series of "Techno Cosmic Masses" in Oakland and other U.S. cities, events designed to connect people to a more ecstatic and visceral celebration and relationship with ritual and the building of community.
The university also added a separate doctorate of ministry degree, with a curriculum based on his 1993 book The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time, which talked about a "priesthood of all workers".
[17] Fox's conception of Creation Spirituality draws on both a close reading of biblical sources and early medieval mystics within Christian traditions as well as today's science.
It seeks common ground with numerous faiths from around the world, in an approach Fox called "deep ecumenism" for its connections across many spiritual practices.
Fox's book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance delves more into these issues.
He was the first to translate Meister Eckhart into English from the critical German editions along with a commentary on his work and helped to launch the Hildegard of Bingen revival.
In 2005, while preparing for a presentation in Germany and following the election of Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, Fox created 95 theses that he then translated into German.