The liberating power of tradition
“[T]radition is a power for liberation, setting one free from the dictatorship of the claim that his own time or culture or school is the goal toward which history has been moving.... Tradition in this sense is the very opposite of the traditionalism that uses the dead theories of the past as a club to beat down all creativity in the present. Authentic tradition is a function of the critical memory and the creative imagination.”
—Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Intellectual (London: Collins, 1966), p. 128.
cf. Chesterton:
". . . tradition is only democracy extended through time. . . Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
(from Orthodoxy
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