ABSTRACT
Jonathan Edwards was only twenty years old when he wrote in his 'Miscellanies' notebooks, 'one alone cannot be excellent', inasmuch as, in such case, there can be no consent. Therefore, if God is excellent, there must be a plurality in God; otherwise, there can be no consent in him. Excellency, though Edwards appears never to have defined it directly, seems to be a harmony or consent of diverse elements. Though Edwards's new concept of being resisted the weight of the divine simplicity tradition, his theological inheritance exerted a strong counterbalance. His well-known declaration of theological independence from the Calvinist tradition meant that he felt free to wrestle with and often to depart from the tradition of divine simplicity. Adherence to the doctrine of divine simplicity has also created large problems in Christian theology for theories of divine predication and doctrines of incarnation and Trinity.
