I will fi rst construct this argument by expounding Radical Orthodoxy’s
(RO) account of reductive rationalism that devalues materiality and RO’s
participatory ontology that restores the value of the material. Rationalism’s
division between faith and reason contributes to the priority of “spiri-
tual” worship that neglects the materiality of embodiment. Second, I will
illustrate a Pentecostal epistemology and ontology that demonstrate their
hermeneutical nature, which will lay the ground for the importance of
embodied liturgy. Third, to reiterate the formative power of embodied
acts, a case study of Exodus 20 will indicate a sacramental covenantal exis-
tence of Israel that interpretively defi ned Israel’s relationship with God.
Finally, in conversation with Simon Chan, I will propose an example of
an embodied liturgy in Pentecostal worship for its potential to contribute
positively to the formation of the whole person.
T HE THEOLOGICAL ROOT OF MODERNITY ACCORDING
TO RADICAL ORTHODOXY
The modern triumph of human reason can be attributed to René
Descartes’s indubitable foundation of the cogito and its attendant anthro-
pology of the person as “precisely nothing but a thinking thing.” 5 RO’s
account of modernity, however, bypasses Descartes and locates it in John
Duns Scotus’s univocity of being. The signifi cance of this thesis is that it
opens the door to epistemic neutrality by creating a sphere of neutrality or
secularity. According to John Milbank, “Duns Scotus... for the fi rst time
established a radical separation of philosophy from theology by declaring
that it was possible to consider being in abstraction from the question of
whether one is considering created or creating being.” 6 The signifi cance
of this move is later seen when the realm of the secular became possible to
be established in the absence of the need for a transcendent, theological
category, namely God.
The revolutionary turn initiated by Duns Scotus becomes clear in
light of what it replaced. In contrast to Duns Scotus’s univocity of being,
Thomas Aquinas’s analogy of being places God as the transcendent source
of the immanent. The immanent cannot be understood apart from the
transcendent; being cannot be understood apart from Being or have exis-
tence apart from Being because its existence derives from or participates
in God. This creaturely participation in God’s Being sustains an ontology
of depth. 7 It also maintains a mystery of the transcendent that cannot be
122 Y. SHIN