92

After outlining the theological project of Radical Orthodoxy – a new movement whose impact has often been compared to that of the nouvelle théologie, this article exposes its re-reading of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham: the Scotist and Ockhamist turn is at the origin not only of modern theology and philosophy, but also of the passage from the liturgical and participatory order if Christendom to the spatial, formal and legalised order of modernity. The contribution of this re-reading is both substantive and methodological – Scotus and Ockham operated a break with the tradition of the “theology and metaphysics of participation” from Plato to Augustine, Anselm and its supreme articulation in Thomas Aquinas, and theology is indispensable to comprehending the nature of and the historical passage to modernity. The article offers a critique of this account, arguing, first, that an onto-theological reading of the history cannot explain why the tradition of participation collapsed when it did, and, second, that Radical Orthodoxy’s conception of tradition is insufficient, not least because it fails to tie together linguistic and phenomenal mediation.