The second chapter deals with P3 (To be henadic is to be polycentric). This is the heart of the book, as it makes a daring claim:
“The henad does not belong to any kind of type no matter how general, let alone as its only member. As such, it can never be that any henad is the only henad: there is nothing for her to be the only one of. It follows that whichever henad theism affirms there to be, it cannot be the only one there is. Theism, in other words, just is polytheism” (p. 18)
Anyone who reads this and is familiar with ancient Mediterranean philosophy might be reminded of Ibn Sīnā’s argument against Polytheism, where multiple ultimate Gods are thought of as impossible due to the limitations he sees as inherent to the members of any multiplicity. Dillon does not cite Ibn Sīnā, but he does cite a similar argument by Aquinas in the appendix, which he gives a detailed response to. The more abbreviated version of that response is given in this chapter, where Dillon notes that arguments of this type, when given in support of what is basically the “Classical Theist” God, lead to a contradiction. If a Henad (or a God) is a “what”, the argument would be valid, but the Classical Theist does not think their God is in any kind of category, and is not “a being”. This means the limitations concerning the multiplicities inherent to beings does not apply.
