the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Fulness
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The word to be considered is pleroma (πλήρωμα). Nouns of the μα termination properly denote the result of the action signified by the cognate verb; and therefore πλήρωμα (from πληροῦν = ‘to fill,’ or, metaphorically, ‘to fulfil’) primarily means that which possesses its full content, an entire set or series, a completed whole regarded in its relation to its component parts, or in contrast with a previous deficiency of any of these parts. The full crew of a ship or ‘strength’ of a regiment is a pleroma; the soul becomes a ‘pleroma of virtues by means of those three excellent things, nature, learning, and practice’ (Philo, de Prœmiis et Pœnis, 11).
This is the sense in Galatians 4:4 : ‘when the fulness of the time came,’ i.e. when the entire measure of the appointed period had been filled up by the lapse of successive ages. So the ‘fulness’ of the Jews (Romans 11:12) and of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25) is the full complement, the entire number contemplated (however determined-by predestination or otherwise). Lightfoot in his classical discussion of the word (see Literature) denies any other than this passive sense; but his argument is far from convincing. When we think of a pitcherful of water, we may regard the water as a completed entity, which by successive additions has reached its full quantity and become a pleroma of water; but much more naturally we think of it as that which fills the pitcher, and is pleroma. This active sense must be accented in Matthew 9:16, Mark 2:21, where τὸ πλήρωμα can only mean the patch that fills the hole in the worn-out garment; in Mark 8:20, where σπνρίδων πληρώματα inevitably means ‘basketfuls’; in 1 Corinthians 10:26, where ‘the earth and the pleroma thereof’ cannot be made to signify anything else than ‘the earth and all that it contains,’ the abundance that fills it. So also in Romans 13:10, ‘love is the pleroma of the law,’ the context (‘he that loveth his neighbour has fulfilled the law’) shows that pleroma is not to be taken passively, as the law in its completeness; but actively, as that which fills up the whole measure of the law’s demands.
The use of the word as a theological term is confined in the NT to those closely related writings, Colossians, Ephesians, and the Fourth Gospel. In Colossians 1:19 it is predicated of Christ that ‘it pleased the Father that in him the whole pleroma should dwell,’ and in Colossians 2:9, with greater precision of statement, ‘in him dwelleth the whole pleroma of the Godhead in a bodily fashion’ (cf. John 1:14). Here the meaning of the word is beyond dispute. All that God is is in Christ; the organic whole of Divine attributes and powers that constitute Deity (θεότης) dwells permanently in Him.
The term with such an application is a startling novelty in NT phraseology, and is an instructive example of the hospitality of early Christian thought, of the promptitude with which it appropriated from its complex intellectual and religious environment such categories as it could convert to its own use. Since the connotation of the word is assumed to be familiar to the Apostle’s readers, it is evident that it must have played an important part in the speculations of the Colossian heresy, as it did also in the Hermetic theology (R. Reitzenstein, Poimandres, 1904, p. 26). In the developed Gnostic systems of the 2nd cent., and especially in the scheme of Valentinus, the conception of the Pleroma became increasingly prominent, as signifying the totality of the Divine emanations. But for a full account of the Gnostic usage, the reader is referred to Lightfoot’s exhaustive note (see Literature) or, in briefer compass, to the articles ‘Pleroma’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) and ‘Fulness’ in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels .
The problem with which religious thought was wrestling, as for centuries it had done and was still to do, was how to relate the transcendent God to the existent universe, to effect a transition from eternal spirit to the material or phenomenal, from the absolutely good to the imperfect and evil. And in Colossae the solution was sought not in a Gnostic series of emanations, but, on the lines of Judaistic speculation, in a hierarchy of ‘principalities,’ ‘dominions,’ and ‘powers,’ the στοιχεῖα who ruled the physical elements and the lower world, among whom the Divine Pleroma was, as it were, distributed, and to whose generally hostile rule men were continually subject. Against this doctrine, without denying the existence and activity of such beings, St. Paul lifts up his magnificent truth of the ‘Cosmic Christ’ and his vision of a ‘Christianized universe.’ Christ is not one of a series of mediators; in Him the whole Pleroma dwells. He is not only Head of the Church, but Head over all things, delivering His people from bondage to the hostile elements, and translating them into His own Kingdom, that new cosmic order in which God will finally reconcile all things unto Himself.
In Ephesians the emphasis is not so much upon Christ’s possession of the Divine Pleroma as upon His communication of it to the Church. The Church is His Body, ‘the pleroma of him that filleth all in all’ (Ephesians 1:23; for exegetical details, see Armitage Robinson in loc.). Whether πλήρωμα be understood in an active sense (the Church is Christ’s complement, that by which He is completed as the head is by the body) or in a passive sense (the Church is Christ’s fulness, because His fulness is imparted to it and dwells in it), the result is practically the same-the one sense implies the other. The Church is the living receptacle and instrument of all that is in Christ, all grace and truth, all purpose and power. But the ideal character thus claimed for the Church is yet to be achieved in the sphere of human aspiration and effort. Its rich diversity of gifts and ministries is bestowed for this very end, that ‘we all’ may be brought to that unity and many-sided completeness of spiritual life in which we shall collectively form a ‘perfect man,’ attaining thus to the ‘measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:13). And, as in the Apostle’s thought the fulness of the Godhead descends through the One Mediator to the Church, so again it ascends through Him to the first creative source. The end of all prayer and of all attainment is ‘that we may be filled unto all the fulness of God’ (Ephesians 3:19). The Church, redeemed humanity in its vital spiritual unity, grown at last to a ‘perfect man,’ to the ‘fulness of Christ,’ which is the ‘fulness of God’; God thus possessing in man the fulfilment of His eternal purpose, His perfect image, the consummate organ of His Spirit-even this is possible to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).
Literature.-articles ‘Pleroma’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) , ‘Fulness’ in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels ; C. F. A. Fritzsche, Pauli ad Romanos Epistola, 1836-43, ii. 469ff.; J. B. Lightfoot, Colossians3, 1879, p. 257f.; J. Armitage Robinson, Ephesians, 1903, p. 255ff.; H. A. W. Meyer, Commentary on the NT, ‘Philippians and Colossians,’ 1875, ‘Ephesians and Philemon,’ 1880; Erich Haupt.; Die Gefangenschaftsbriefe7 in Meyer’s Kommentar zum NT, 1902; D. Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, 1897, p. 156ff.; J. Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, 1908, p. 29ff.; M. Dibelins, Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des Paulus, 1909; W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, 1907, p. 267.
Robert Law.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Fulness'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/f/fulness.html. 1906-1918.
