fullness: that which fills something, or the state of being filled or complete
At its plainest, this word names what fills a space: the leftover bread that fills the baskets after the crowd is fed, the new cloth that fills the tear in an old coat, or, in a line Paul borrows from the Psalms, everything that fills the earth. It is an ordinary Greek word for the contents that bring something up to its full measure.
From that base the word stretches outward. It can mean a complete count of people (the full number of Israel, or of the nations), the appointed moment when time has run its course and is ripe, or the act of bringing a command to its goal (love as the filling-up of the law). Most weighty of all, it names a state of utter fullness, above all the entire fullness of God himself coming to dwell in Christ, and the grace that overflows from him to everyone who receives.
What holds these uses together is a single idea bending to its setting: something brought to its full extent, whether that is a basket, a number, a season, or the very life of God. The word does not carry a fixed technical sense on its own. Scholars stress that the surrounding words decide what it means each time, so the same noun can be as homely as a basketful of bread or as vast as the divine presence filling the universe.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether this noun carries a built-in passive sense (the resulting state of being full) or is genuinely flexible, taking active, passive, or quantitative force from its context.
- minorityThe noun is essentially passive and resultative, naming a completed state of fullness, and even the patch and basket uses should be read that way.; J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, detached note on the meaning of plērōma (3rd ed., 1879)
- majorityContext, not the form of the word, decides the sense; the noun is attested in active, passive, resultative, and quantitative uses across Greek, the Septuagint, and the New Testament.; Gerhard Delling, plērōma, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 6; BDAG, s.v. plērōma; P. D. Overfield, Pleroma: A Study in Content and Context, New Testament Studies 25 (1979)
Whether the New Testament use of the word was borrowed from a pre-Christian Gnostic system in which it named the upper divine realm of aeons.
- minorityThe word was taken over from a pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer myth of Iranian and Mandaean roots.; Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (ET 1971); Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos (1913)
- majorityThere is no demonstrably pre-Christian Gnostic source; the technical Gnostic use is second-century and was derived from the New Testament, while the real background lies in the Old Testament, Jewish Wisdom writings, and Stoic thought.; Carsten Colpe, Die religionsgeschichtliche Schule (1961); Edwin Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism (2nd ed. 1983)