which man is separate from God. this separateness being the essence of sin.

Dr. Thielicke argues that the relationship of man and woman in the first chapter of Genesis constitutes the Christian norm. In this view, the Christian obligation to sex is the obligation to show forth in human life this perfect relationship by way of marriage, and every other pression of sex is either "borderline" or aberration.

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When it comes to the homosexual. then, Dr. Thielicke concludes that there can be no theological support for this anomoly. This does not mean that the homosexual is any worse than any other human being who exists in the fallen state; it means that Christianity offers his situation no spiritual justification. If there is to be any satisfaction of his sexual needs and Dr. Thielicke agrees that the homosexual may certainly need such satisfaction it must be achieved privately, without any encouragement or protection from society.

So Dr. Thielicke accepts the Wolfenden Report and the Swedish Pastoral Letter. He concurs completely that homosexuality is an ethical problem and that the criminal law, except where it is concerned with the protection of youth and public decency, should have nothing to say about it. He concludes, also, that the pastoral responsibility and really. he has addressed his book to pastors should go no farther than helping the homosexual to achieve the sublimation of sex.

This would, of course, seem like a limited solution; sublimation can be advised much easier than it can be practiced. Indeed, what is it? The theory that sexual energy can be directed into nonsexual forms of creativity, or that sexual joy can be achieved without sexual consumma-

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tion, remains problematical. What makes Dr. Thielicke's discussion of the subject provocative and helpful. though, is his earnest awareness of its difficulties. He takes theologians like Barth to task for binding heavy burdens on the homosexual whom they have probably, he suggests, had little occasion to help.

Possibly the most important part of this book for the homosexual himself is not what it says about him. but what it says about the relation of man to woman. The reader who challenges or rejects the theological basis of Dr. Thielicke's argument may find it profitable to ponder the meaning of womanhood in balanced society, and the larger and impersonal relationship of man to woman which this book implicitly commends.

Incidentally, Dr. Thielicke's conclusion is interesting that if society tried to outlaw female homosexuality, it would immediately increase the prevalence of the objectionable features which society identifies with the male homosexual.

It is also interesting to speculate on what would happen to a line of theological reasoning on sex if it were taken as the premise that the male and female referred to in the first chapter of Genesis were not two persons, but two aspects of the individual. The Gospel according to Thomas says that Jesus spoke to this effect. In answer to the disciples' question about when they would enter the kingdom, Thomas had Jesus saying: "When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below. and when you make the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female."

This view, conceivably, would entitle the homosexual to special attention; in light of it, he might be

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