The problem which Prof Lash tackles in this book is whether the Church of today is still the Church of the Apostles the problem which, for about a century, we have called 'the development of dogma'. It is his particular contribution to show that, in this development, evolution through time is never discontinuity that this evolution through time is never wholly free from regressions, impoverishments, marginal deviations, and even some abrupt intermissions of a quite promising emergent trend.