Byron Jack Gaist
09-09-2009, 08:44 AM
Dear all,
I found the following definition of 'pleroma' on the web:
pleroma Greek for ‘fullness’, and used in Eph. 1:23 and Col. 1:24; it can have either an active or a passive sense ‘that which fills up’ or ‘that which is filled up’; therefore the meaning is either that the Church (Eph. 1:22) completes Christ, or that the Church is filled by Christ. The word (which the epistles may have hijacked from Gnostic terminology) may refer to Christ as both over the Church, as its head, but also within the Church, which is his Body. Is the definition given here compatible with the Orthodox understanding of the term? And to what extent is it true that the term is 'hijacked' from the Gnostics?
In Christ
Byron
I found the following definition of 'pleroma' on the web:
pleroma Greek for ‘fullness’, and used in Eph. 1:23 and Col. 1:24; it can have either an active or a passive sense ‘that which fills up’ or ‘that which is filled up’; therefore the meaning is either that the Church (Eph. 1:22) completes Christ, or that the Church is filled by Christ. The word (which the epistles may have hijacked from Gnostic terminology) may refer to Christ as both over the Church, as its head, but also within the Church, which is his Body. Is the definition given here compatible with the Orthodox understanding of the term? And to what extent is it true that the term is 'hijacked' from the Gnostics?
In Christ
Byron