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Pleroma (Greek ) generally refers to the totality of divine powers. The word means fullness from ("fills") comparable to which means "full", and is used in Christian theological contexts: both in Gnosticism
Gnosticism

Gnosticism refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a Nature created by an imperfect god, the demiurge; this being is frequently identified with the Abrahamic God, and is contrasted with a superior entity, ref...
 generally, and by Paul of Tarsus
Paul of Tarsus

Saint Paul, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul or Paul of Tarsus , was a Hellenistic Judaism, who called himself the "Apostle to the Gentiles", and was, together with Saint Peter and James the Just, the most notable of early Christian missionaries....
 in Colossians 2.9.

Gnosticism holds that the world is controlled by archon
Archon

Archon is a Greek language word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ???-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchism....
s, among whom some versions of Gnosticism claim is the deity of the Old Testament
Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
, who held aspects of the human captive, either knowingly or accidentally.






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Pleroma (Greek ) generally refers to the totality of divine powers. The word means fullness from ("fills") comparable to which means "full", and is used in Christian theological contexts: both in Gnosticism
Gnosticism

Gnosticism refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a Nature created by an imperfect god, the demiurge; this being is frequently identified with the Abrahamic God, and is contrasted with a superior entity, ref...
 generally, and by Paul of Tarsus
Paul of Tarsus

Saint Paul, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul or Paul of Tarsus , was a Hellenistic Judaism, who called himself the "Apostle to the Gentiles", and was, together with Saint Peter and James the Just, the most notable of early Christian missionaries....
 in Colossians 2.9.

Gnosticism holds that the world is controlled by archon
Archon

Archon is a Greek language word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ???-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchism....
s, among whom some versions of Gnosticism claim is the deity of the Old Testament
Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
, who held aspects of the human captive, either knowingly or accidentally. The heavenly pleroma is the totality of all that is regarded in our understanding of "divine". The pleroma is often referred to as the light existing "above" our world, occupied by spiritual beings who self-emanated from the pleroma. These beings are described as aeon
Aeon

The word aeon, also spelled eon or ?on, means "age", "forever" or "for eternity". It is a Latin transliteration from the koine Greek word , from the archaic ....
s (eternal beings) and sometimes as archons. Jesus
Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , also known as Jesus Christ, is the central figure of Christianity and is revered by most Christian churches as the Son of God and the Incarnation ....
 is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent, along with his counterpart Sophia, from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity and in so doing be brought back into unity with the Pleroma. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic religious cosmology
Religious cosmology

Religious cosmologies are ways of explaining the history and evolution of the universe based, at least in part, on the acceptance of principles that cannot be justified by accepted scientific arguments ....
.

Gnostic texts envision the pleroma as aspects of God, the eternal Divine Principle, who can only be partially understood through the pleroma. Each "aeon" (i.e. aspect of God) is given a name (sometimes several) and a female counterpart (Gnostic viewed divinity and completeness in terms of male/female unification). The Gnostic myth goes on to tell how the aeon wisdom's female counterpart Sophia separated from the Pleroma to form the demiurge
Demiurge

Demiurge in philosophical and religious language is a term for a creator deity, responsible for the Creation myth of the physical universe.In the sense of a divine creative principle as expressed in ergon or energy, the word was first introduced by Plato in Timaeus , 41a ....
, thus giving birth to the material world.

Modern use

Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form since the word appears in the book of Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic
Gnosticism and the New Testament

This article discusses the relationship between Gnosticism and the New Testament.The Gnosticism were a rather diverse group of early movements finding a basis often in Christianity or Judaism....
, such as Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels, n?e Hiesey, , is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is best known for her studies and writing on the Gnostic Gospels....
 of Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
, view the reference in Colossians as something that was to be interpreted in the gnostic sense.

Carl Jung

Carl Jung
Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of Analytical psychology. Jung's approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in counterculture movements across the globe....
 used the word in his mystical 1916 unpublished work, Seven Sermons to the Dead
The Seven Sermons To The Dead

The Seven Sermons To The Dead was a text written in 1917 by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and ascribed to the gnostic teacher Basilides. The text speaks cryptically about the Pleroma, the Abraxas and the soul; therein, Jung also discusses his principle of Individuality and warns of the mystical tendency to 'unite' with God, which he interp...
, which was finally published in an appendix to the second edition of Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), and later in Answer to Job (1952). According to Jung, pleroma is both "nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about pleroma. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities."

Gregory Bateson

In his work on the Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson was a United Kingdom anthropology, social sciences, linguistics, semiotics and cybernetics whose work intersected that of many other fields....
 adopts and extends Jung's distinction between Pleroma (the non-living world that is undifferentiated by subjectivity) and Creatura (the living world, subject to perceptual difference, distinction, and information).

Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

John M. Dillon
John M. Dillon

John Myles Dillon is an Irish people Classics and philosopher who was Regius Professor of Greek in Trinity College, Dublin between 1980 and 2006....
 in his "Pleroma and Noetic Cosmos: A Comparative Study" states that Gnosticism imported its concept of the ideal realm or pleroma from Plato's concept the cosmos and Demiurge in Timaeus
Timaeus

Timaeus is a Greek name, meaning "Honour". It may refer to:*Timaeus , a Socratic dialogue by Plato*Timaeus of Locri, the 5th-century Pythagorean philosopher, appearing in Plato's dialogue...
 and of Philo
Philo

Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Judaism philosopher born in Alexandria, Egypt....
's Noetic cosmos in contrast to the aesthetic cosmos. Dillon does this by contrasting the Noetic cosmos to passages from the Nag Hammadi, where the aeons are expressed as the thoughts of God. Dillon expresses the concept that pleroma is a Gnostic adaptation of Hellenic
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 ideas since before Philo there is no Jewish tradition that accepts that the material world or cosmos was based on an ideal world that exists as well.

See also

  • Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
    Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

    Neoplatonism is the modern term for a school of Hellenistic philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and some of his early Platonism....


Bibliography

  • John M. Dillon, "Pleroma and Noetic Cosmos: A Comparative Study" in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (1992), R.T. Wallis, ed., State Univ. of New York Press, ISBN 0-7914-1337-3, 2006 edition: ISBN 0-7914-1338-1.