Timothy Keller referenced the book in two episodes, using its thesis that the Christian virtues are concatenated and interdependent to illustrate authentic spiritual growth. He explained that genuine love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness are confirmed when they appear together, not as isolated or counterfeit experiences. The host treated the work as an authoritative source, describing it as a great book that supports his points.
Episode: Peace – Overcoming Anxiety
Jonathan Edwards' book, Religious Affection, was quoted to explain that the only way to know whether a person's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. is genuine is if they occur all at once.
Jonathan Edwards in his great book, Religious Affection, says the only way you can really be sure that a person's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and all that is not counterfeit is that it happens all together.
Episode: How to Change
Jonathan Edwards wrote a book in which he stated that all the graces of Christianity go together and are interdependent. He argued that true peace comes from humility, and self-control from joy.
Years ago, Jonathan Edwards wrote a book and he made one of his chapters this thesis. He says, where is it? All, pardon me, he says there is a concatenation of the graces of Christianity. Now, you know, in modern editions, the editors never put down concatenation. They just put down, they figure, oh, that must be an archaic word. It's not, it's just a big word. And they say, ah, Jonathan Edwards says there's a connection between the graces of Christianity. No, no, if you read the thing, you'll see.
This is what he says about the graces of Christianity. He says, if you wanna know whether the character growth that's happening in your life, if you wanna know whether the love that's growing in your life is real spiritual love from the Spirit, from the Gospel, if you wanna know it's real love, real joy, real peace, real patience, and not a counterfeit, not something artificial, not something temporary, not something patched up, therefore it's fragile and it will go away under certain circumstances, or it's just natural and it's part of your psychology or your temperament, if you wanna know whether these things are spiritual and from the Spirit, you must see that they always are absolutely concatenated.
He says three things. First of all, this means first of all, okay, that all the graces of Christianity go together.
He goes further than that. He goes a little further than that. He goes a little further and he says, secondly, they're interdependent. It's not just that they always come connected. They're very, very interdependent.