knowledgeable writers. Throughout he keeps his approach on the level of the pastor and this is what gives his words their greatest strength. Taking the great Karl Barth to task. Thielicke writes, we ask wheth-

er Barth has ever accompanied a homosexual pastorally on the 'way' he has to travel. We suspect that if this had been so the fundamental theological orientation of his position would have been different." p 272.

One quotation must suffice to indicate the incisiveness of the author's position: "The predisposition itself, the homosexual potentiality as such, dare not be not be any more strongly depreciated than the status of existence which we all share as men in the disordered creation that exists since the Fall (post lapsum). Consequently, there is not the slightest excuse for maligning the constitutional homosexual morally or theologically. We are all under the same condemnation and each of us has received his 'share' of it. In any case, from this point of view the homosexual share of that condemnation has no greater gravity which would justify any Pharisaic feelings of self-righteousness and integrity on the part of us 'normal' persons." p. 283.

Recognizing that most homosexuals are incurable ("his irreversible situation") and that celibacy is not a sufficient answer for most, the author supports the position of self acceptance by the homosexual and acceptance of him by the Church. He calls for the homosexual to "structure the man-man relationship in an ethically responsible way." pp 284-5.

Rev. Robt. W. Wood

Theology often tends to take Christ out of Christianity. It is the merit of Dr. Thielicke's profound and

searching book, The Ethics of Sex, that in it theology yields repeatedly to the demands of Christian compassion. It does so when he examines marriage and divorce, when he looks. into birth control, abortion, and homosexuality. But it raises many questions in the thought of this reviewer as to the adequacy of the Christian theology which it expounds.

Or can theology be adequate to the subject? Did Jesus lay the basis for a theology of sexual eithics? Or did he, as Dr. Thielicke suggests but does not agree with, leave this large area of human life to influences which would vary from place to place and time to time under the impact of Jesus' central teaching that man is really the son of God?

When the Sadducees put before Jesus what they considered a difficult question who would be the husband in heaven of the woman who had seven husbands-Jesus disposed of the question very simply. He said that in heaven, marriage is no factor; men are as the angels. The Sadducees didn't believe in angels, so they must have pondered..

Perhaps homosexuality is not heavenly factor either. If it is not then the ethics of homosexuality boils down to human appropriateness. And this, really, is where Dr. Thielicke leaves it, although leaving it there, he still labels it sin. Yet he calls on theologians most earnestly to seek to view the homosexual with compassion and respect.

This business of sin, as Dr. Thielicke presents it, is all bound up with distinctions between the two documents which open the Genesis discussion of creation. The first, or Eloistic, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, describes creation as God intends it; the second or Jehovistic, beginning in the second chapter, describes the departure or "fall" in