Lexicon

G4138 - pleroma

Strong's: G4138 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: play'-ro-mah Part of speech: neuter noun Root: from G4137 - pleroo (πληρόω, "to fill, fulfill, make complete") NT occurrences: 17

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

(Passive) That which is filled, the body of believers filled with God's presence; the church as Christ's plērōma (Ephesians 1:23).
(Active) That which fills, the content with which a thing is filled; a patch filling a hole (Mark 2:21).
Fullness, abundance, the totality of what fills.
Completion, fulfillment, accomplishment, the bringing-to-completion of a thing (Romans 13:10, "love is the plērōma of the law").
(Christological / cosmic, in Colossians), the totality of divine being / divine attributes that dwells in Christ.

Theological force, Christ as plērōma of deity

The word's most theologically loaded use is in Colossians, where Paul deliberately appropriates a term already loaded by proto-Gnostic and Greek philosophical speculation. In Hellenistic Gnostic / Platonic systems, the plērōma was the realm of divine fullness, populated by aeons (intermediary divine beings) emanating downward from the high God toward the material world. Salvation involved escaping the lower material realm and ascending into the plērōma.

Paul's response in Colossians:

Colossians 1:19, "in [Christ] all the plērōma was pleased to dwell"
Colossians 2:9, "in Him all the plērōma of the theotēs dwells in bodily form" (katoikei sōmatikōs)

The Pauline counter-claim: there is no need for a hierarchy of intermediary aeons. All the divine fullness dwells bodily in Christ, fully, not partially; in human flesh, not merely in heavenly realms. The plērōma is concentrated in one person, not spread across emanations. This collapses the Gnostic system at its center.

The pairing of plērōma with G2320 - theotes (essential deity, not mere divine quality) in Colossians 2:9 is a maximal Christological claim: the totality of what makes God God dwells in Christ, in His incarnate body.

Notable verses

Christological, the fullness in Christ

Colossians 2.9, en autō katoikei pan to plērōma tēs theotētos sōmatikōs, "in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form"
Colossians 1:19, "in Him all the plērōma was pleased to dwell"
John 1:16, "of His plērōma we have all received, and grace upon grace"

Ecclesiological, the church as Christ's fullness

Ephesians 1:23, "[the church] which is His body, the plērōma of Him who fills all in all"
Ephesians 4:13, "until we all attain to the unity of the faith… to the measure of the stature which belongs to the plērōma of Christ"
Ephesians 3:19, "to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the plērōma of God"

Eschatological, the fullness of time / Gentiles

Galatians 4:4, "when the plērōma of the time came, God sent forth His Son"
Romans 11:25, "until the plērōma of the Gentiles has come in"
Ephesians 1:10, "the dispensation of the plērōma of the times"

Quantitative / abundance

Romans 11:12, "if their transgression is riches for the world… how much more will their plērōma be"
Romans 13:10, "love is the plērōma of the law" (fulfillment / completion)
Romans 15:29, "the plērōma of the blessing of Christ"
Mark 2:21, patch (plērōma) on garment
Mark 6:43; 8:20, basketfuls (plērōmata) of fragments

Patristic / scholarly note

Irenaeus (Against Heresies I, c. AD 180) attacks the Valentinian Gnostic plērōma-system, a hierarchy of 30 aeons emanating from the high God. He uses Colossians 2:9 explicitly: if the entire plērōma dwells in Christ, the Gnostic emanation hierarchy is destroyed; there's no salvific intermediary realm to ascend into.

Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria all develop the Colossians 2:9 use against subsequent Christological heresies (Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism). The "in bodily form" (sōmatikōs) prevents reduction to a metaphorical divine indwelling, Christ's incarnate humanity is the locus of full deity.

Modern conservative scholarship (F. F. Bruce, Colossians NICNT; Doug Moo, Colossians and Philemon PNTC, 2008) treats the verse as the high-water-mark Christological claim of Pauline theology, equal to John 1:1 and 14 in importance for the doctrine of Christ's deity.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here.