The meaning of the verb πληροῦν.
The verb πληροῦν has two senses. It signifies either (1) ‘To fill’, e.g. Acts ii. 2 ἐπλήρωσεν ὅλον τὸν οἶκον; or (2) ‘To fulfil, complete, perfect, accomplish’, e.g. Matt. xxvi. 56 ἵνα πληρωθῶσιν αἱ γραφαί, Rom. xiii. 8 νόμον πεπλήρωκεν, Acts xii. 25 πληρώσαντες τὴν διακονίαν. The latter sense indeed is derived from the former, but practically it has become separate from it. The word occurs altogether about a hundred times in the New Testament, and for every one instance of the former sense there are at least four of the latter.
False issue raised respecting πλήρωμα
|resulting in theological confusion|
In the investigations which have hitherto been made into the signification of the derived substantive πλήρωμα, as it occurs in the New Testament, an almost exclusive prominence has been given to the former meaning of the verb; and much confusion has arisen in consequence. The question has been discussed whether πλήρωμα has an active or a passive sense, whether it describes the filling substance or the filled receptacle: and not unfrequently critics have arrived at the result that different grammatical senses must be attached to it in different passages, even within the limits of the same epistle. Thus it has been maintained that the word has a passive sense ‘id quod impletur’ in Ephes. i. 23 τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ ἥτις ἐστὶν τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ, τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν πληρουμένου, and an active sense ‘id quod implet’ in Ephes. iii. 19 ἵνα πληρωθῆτε εἰς πᾶν τὸ πληρώμα τοῦ Θεοῦ. Indeed so long as we see in πληροῦν only the sense ‘to fill’, and refuse to contemplate the sense ‘to complete’, it seems impossible to escape from the difficulties which meet us at every turn, otherwise than by assigning to its derivative πλήρωμα both an active and a passive sense; but the greatest violence is thus done to the connexion of theological ideas.
and disregard of grammar.
Moreover the disregard of lexical rules is not less violent[[540]]. Substantives in -μα, formed from the perfect passive, appear always to have a passive sense. They may denote an abstract notion or a concrete thing; they may signify the action itself regarded as complete, or the product of|Meaning of substantives in -μα.| the action; but in any case they give the result of the agency involved in the corresponding verb. Such for example are ἄγγελμα ‘a message’, ἅμμα ‘a knot’, ἀργύρωμα ‘a silver-made vessel’, βούλευμα ‘a plan’, δικαίωμα ‘a righteous deed’ or ‘an ordinance’, ζήτημα ‘an investigation’, κήρυγμα ‘a proclamation’, κώλυμα ‘a hindrance’, ὁμοίωμα ‘a likeness’, ὅραμα ‘a vision’, στρῶμα ‘a carpet’, σφαίρωμα ‘a round thing’, etc. In many cases the same word will have two meanings, both however passive; it will denote both the completed action and the result or object of the action: e.g. ἅρπαγμα the ‘robbery’ or the ‘booty’, ἀντάλλαγμα the ‘exchange’ or the ‘thing given or taken in exchange’, θήρευμα the ‘hunt’ or the ‘prey’, πάτημα the ‘tread’ or the ‘carpet’, and the like. But in all cases the word is strictly passive; it describes that which might have stood after the active verb, either as the direct object or as the cognate notion. |Apparent exceptions.|The apparent exceptions are only apparent. Sometimes this deceptive appearance is in the word itself. Thus κάλυμμα ‘a veil’ seems to denote ‘that which covers’, but it is really derived from another sense and construction of καλύπτειν, not ‘to hide’, but ‘to wrap round’ (e.g. Hom. Il. v. 315 πρόσθε δέ οἱ πέπλοιο φαεινοῦ πτύγμ’ ἐκάλυψεν, xxi. 321 τόσσην οἱ ἄσιν καθύπερθε καλύψω), and therefore is strictly passive. Sometimes again we may be led astray by the apparent connexion with the following genitive. Thus in Plut. Mor. 78 E δήλωμα τοῦ προκόπτειν the word does not mean, as might appear at first sight, ‘a thing showing’, but ‘a thing shown’, ‘a demonstration given’; nor in 2 Thess. i. 5 ἐνδειγμα τῆς δικαίας κρίσεως must we explain ἕνδειγμα ‘a thing proving’, but ‘a thing proved’, ‘a proof’. And the same is probably the case also with such expressions as συμποσίων ἐρέθισμα (Critias in Athen. xiii. p. 600 D), τόξου ῥῦμα (Æsch. Pers. 147), and the like; where the substantives in -μα are no more deprived of their passive sense by the connexion, than they are in ὑπόδημα ποδῶν or στρῶμα κλίνης; though in such instances the license of poetical construction may often lead to a false inference. Analogous to this last class of cases is Eur. Troad. 824 Ζηνὸς ἔχεις κυλίκων πλήρωμα καλλίσταν λατρείαν, not ‘the filling’, but ‘the fulness of the cups, the brimming cups, of Zeus.’
πλήρωμα connected with the second sense of πληροῦν.]
Now if we confine ourselves to the second of the two senses above ascribed to πληροῦν, it seems possible to explain πλήρωμα in the same way, at all events in all the theological passages of St Paul and St John, without doing any violence to the grammatical form. As πληροῦν is ‘to complete’, so πλήρωμα is ‘that which is completed’, i.e. the complement[[541]], the full tale, the entire number or quantity, the plenitude, the perfection.
Its uses in Classical writers.