Let it Blaze, Let it Blaze: Pyrotheology and the Theology of the Event

Abstract

Taking my point of departure from Virginia Woolf’s exclamation, ‘let it blaze, let it blaze’, in reference to the destruction of the prevailing system of the education of women, which effectively excluded them from power, I advance the claim that the fire of Pyrotheology is not light but heat, not the light of Enlightenment but the heat of passion, the heart aflame, a fiery passion for the impossible, a passion of non-knowing, a passion for the unknown. Playing with fire is also dangerous; fire is also what theology prepares for the heretics. Fire is a figure of the event. The event both burns off the old and enkindles the new. The pyrotheological burns off certainty, safety, self-satisfaction in order to enkindle a more dangerous faith which keeps the future open after the death of God. I conclude with several questions for Peter Rollins about the desire of Pyrotheology.