Letters.(Letter to the Editor)

I appreciate Naomi Schaefer's largely favorable review of my book Common Prayers ("Neither Nor," Oct. 15). However, I never predicted or advocated the "death of God" theology. In The Secular City I devoted the entire last chapter to an attack on that movement, and I have frequently debated its advocates.

Miss Schaefer shows a keen appreciation of the tension I sometimes experience between my own Christian faith and the Jewish practices I participate in, but the point of my book is that my effort to understand Judaism has made me a more thoughtful and committed Christian. Therefore her closing comment, that she wonders why I "don't just convert," misreads my whole thesis. More and more Jewish and Christian married couples are finding, as we did, that such marriages can be a spiritual pilgrimage for both.

Prof. Harvey Cox

Cambridge, Mass.

In his review of Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon ("Hence, Loathed Melancholy," Oct. 1), John D. Gartner wondered why natural selection has not eliminated the genetic cause of depression.

I used to wonder the same thing about the hypothetical genetic cause of (or predisposition toward) homosexuality, until someone pointed out that natural selection eliminates dominant genetic characteristics adverse to successful reproduction, but not recessive ones.

I would go so far as to predict that if there are any genetic causes of (or predispositions toward) depression or homosexuality, they would necessarily have to be recessive.