A WOMAN OF PERFUME AND PRAYER SPEAKS WITH CHRIST-SOPHIA: WISDOM AS A BASIS FOR DIALOGUE BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS

Woman Wisdom is not one to tarry. Just as she has taken many forms in many places throughout history and made many new alliances today, too, she calls to a new configuration. Throughout history “practical ” Wisdom has appeared in many guises. As goddess, in proverbial sayings, in theosophical and theological reflection and even in personified form. In all her forms she brings a sense of the dynamism and movement of Reality. In her is found the integration of the sensual with the divine, the immanence with the transcendence of God, the material with the spiritual, the experiential with the philosophical, the particular with the universal. Von Rad refers to the “unfinished ” and perhaps “unfinishable ” nature of Wisdom.1 Many feminist scholars today, Jewish, Christian and some Muslims are addressing themselves to a feminist critique of their respective religious traditions and to the birth of new forms of doing ethics. Feminist ethical theory arises from the analysis of human experience and activity, especially that of women and the poor, most of whom are women. In this way it differs from most current ecumenical and interreligious dialogue which is dominated by male members of the human race. As women (and at times feminist men) from different faith communities increasingly get in contact with one another in order to share their vision of liberation and try to work together towards a new praxis for personal and social transformation, there is brought to birth not only an academic method which re-envisages I like to think that perhaps the form in which she is now appearing is that of a feminist liberation ethic as this emerges today with its stress on God's ongoing involvement with and in creation. how the religions are studied but which also embraces a new social and religious vision which affects what religion is i.e. how religions are lived and practised.