From Professor John Quenby

Sir, - Unlike some of your corespondents replying to the Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard ( Letters, 5 April), I cannot identify any period when evolution of core doctrines and practices of the Church ceased.

Between the crucifixion and the earliest New Testament writings, the ritual meal of the Last Supper lost all but a nominal element of physical feeding. The threefold ministry took considerably longer to appear, and then was drastically amended at the Reformation in a way accepted now by more than half of all Christians.

Christology was defined at Nicaea about 250 years after these earliest epistles, with some significant dissension. Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, there are some of us who would not state our Trinitarian belief today in language based on Hellenistic thought, and this debate is given respectibility by, for example, The Meaning of Jesus by N. T. Wright and Marcus Borg (1999).

It has taken more than 1700 years for a consensus that slavery is wrong to emerge, more to reject the idea of strong nations' holding empires; and the implications of Pauline equality are yet to be settled. Innovation in the NHS was mentioned as a way in which the process can go wrong, but why have it at all, if the biblical tradition of laying on of hands is the last word?

My reading of 2000 years of church history is of continued evolution in our awareness of God. Each step must start within the context of the tradition that came before, but, if modern physics is any guide, the end result can appear surprisingly fresh - a tribute, of course, to our Maker.

JOHN QUENBY
72 Pilgrims Way East
Otford
Kent TN14 5SJ