The German Romantic theologian and philosopher Schleiermacher wrote, "The virtuosity (or special calling) of a person is at the same time the melody of that person's life, and it remains a simple, meager series of notes unless religion, with its endlessly rich variety, accompanies it with all notes and raises the simple song to a full-voiced, glorious harmony." It is around this melody that Jaroslav Pelikan, a great theologian of our own day, weaves the polyphonic threads of philosophy, theology, morals, history, and personality to create a singular portrait of his life and work.

The Melody of Theology is really two books in one: a dictionary in which a reader can browse through piquant explorations of some of the most interesting topics in Christian theology, and an intellectual autobiography in which Jaroslav Pelikan has used those topics to give an account of the traditions to which he owes the formation of his own mind and spirit. As he says, "An intellectual autobiography in the format of a 'philosophical dictionary' permits the self-indulgence of employing the seeming objectivity of some eighty-two entries, arranged in the impersonal sequence of alphabetical order, to express a completely personal set of prejudices."

Among the large topics addressed in this volume are the Bible, Faith, Grace, Reformation and Renaissance, and Sin. Among the towering figures of religion and theology are Dante, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Erasmus, Gibbon, Martin Luther, Paul the Apostle, and Schleiermacher. Among the technical topics analyzed are Apocatastasis, Christian Creeds, the term "Ecumenical," Eschatology, Patristics, and the Trinity. The Melody of Theology belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wants to study a history and tradition that precede us and will continue after us, and also of the reader who would like to make the acquaintance of a subtle analytic mind and a generous open heart.

Jaroslav Pelikan is a theologian and Sterling Professor of History at Yale University.