Lecture remains a valuable tool in the student learning toolbox--one that at its best helps students unpack what they read for class, place course material in context, and see how a subject matter expert solves problems. It may be useful to think of lecture and active learning as a dialectical tension satisfied by the interactive lecture. Just as dialectical studies of relationships sought to challenge the orthodoxy that more self-disclosure is necessarily better and replace it with a more realistic tension between openness and closedness, the author of this brief forum article seeks to challenge both the detractors of lecture (e.g. Westervelt 2016) and the detractors of active learning (e.g. Worthen 2015), replacing this dichotomy with a lecture-activity tension. Lectures provide content and context for student reflection and can be tailored to students, focusing on areas of difficulty as well as areas that pique students' expressed interests. The activities students engage in during interactive lectures help them to check their understanding of subject matter and develop deeper understanding in which they apply, analyze, synthesize, and critique course material. When the instructor debriefs an activity, knowledge is further refined and reinforced. Interactive lectures thus provide multiple opportunities for students to reflect on the material and figure out how it fits into their existing knowledge base. Treating active learning and lecture as a dialectical tension can therefore be seen as the basis for the stabilizing of synapses through repetition that Leamnson (1999) claims is the very definition of learning. [Other articles in this forum include: The Lecture's Absent Audience (EJ1132073); The Lost Art of Lecturing: Cultivating Student Listening and Notetaking (EJ1132054); What Is the Place of Lecture in Student Learning Today? (EJ1132078); Sage on the Stage or Bore at the Board? (EJ1132063); Sound Decision Making about the Lecture's Role in the College Classroom (EJ1132068); Rethinking Lecture-Learning from Communicative Lenses: A Response to Forum Essays (EJ1132088); and The Lecture and the Learning Paradigm (EJ1132080).]