But in keeping with the doctrine of simplicity, Cheynell makes the point that just “as truth is not goodness, nor goodness truth, nor either of them unity, and yet all three are entity, so too the Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Father, nor is either of them the Holy Spirit, and yet all three are God.”^[5]

In 1650 amidst the rise of Socinianism in England, Francis Cheynell, a prominent Westminster Divine, wrote an apologetic of orthodox Trinitarianism, entitled The Divine Trinunity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.^[1] This work stood out as clear exposition of both biblical and historically orthodox Trinitarian theology.

Most notable, Cheynell grounded the doctrine of Eternal Generation in the idea of God’s simplicity. This was as notable as it was surprising because of the Socinian’s understanding of God’s oneness, which caused them to deny the eternal generation of the Son. “The Socinians tell us, they cannot believe that the Father did beget a Son of his own substance, because God is eternal and unchangeable; the single essence of God is indivisible, and being most singularly one is incommunicable; part of the divine essence could not be communicated (they say) to the Son, because the essence is impartible, indivisible…”^[2]

But Cheynell rightly understood that the historic doctrine of simplicity (with its more complex nuances) undercuts (the simplicity of) mere oneness.^[3] For Cheynell, it was divine simplicity that gave support to the idea of three eternal Persons, who in relationship to one another, were in essence one God. He asks us to compare John 10verse 30 with verse 37, where Jesus says “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30) and then goes on to say that “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not” (John 10:37).

Cheynell remarks that from these verses we can conclude “that Christ hath the same divine nature and Godhead with the Father; they both have the same divine and essential Titles and Attributes, and perform the same inward operations in reference to all Creatures whatsoever; and therefore [the Ancient Church Fathers] did farther infer that they had reason to use the word consubstantial… Christ doth lay claim to all that is natural, to all that belongs to the Father as God, [but] not to any thing which belongs to to him as the Father, as the first person of the blessed Trinity.^[4]

But in keeping with the doctrine of simplicity, Cheynell makes the point that just “as truth is not goodness, nor goodness truth, nor either of them unity, and yet all three are entity, so too the Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Father, nor is either of them the Holy Spirit, and yet all three are God.”^[5]

In our own day, James Dolezal has posited the same point when he writes that “if [Divine] simplicity and its unique requirements are denied, any number of compositional models of divine unity might adequately explain how the one God subsists as three distinct persons. And it is not apparent that a compositional model of divine unity must necessarily be monotheistic rather than tritheistic.”^[6]

And indeed, this is what Cheynell wants to argue, but he does so in an interesting move. The angle from which he addresses the eternal generation of the Son from the Father is that, in light of God’s immutable and simple essence, the eternal begetting of a Son is a truth which magnifies the glory of God in all his simplicity.

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