Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition

A "leap of progress" is not a standing broad jump, which begins at the line of where we are now; it is a running broad jump through where we have been to where we go next. The growth of insight -- in science, in the arts, in philosophy and theology -- has not come through progressively sloughing off more and more of tradition, as though insight would be purest and deepest when it has finally freed itself of the dead past. It simply has not worked that way in the history of the tradition, and it does not work that way now. By including the dead in the circle of discourse, we enrich the quality of the conversation. Of course we do not listen only to the dead, nor are we a tape recording of the tradition. That really would be the dead faith of the living, not the living faith of the dead. But we do acquire the "insight" for which Emerson was pleading when we learn to interact creatively with the "tradition" which he was denouncing.

[in Part Four, "Tradition as Heritage: A Vindication"]