The term with such an application is a startling novelty in NT phraseology, and is an instructive example of the hospitality of early Christian thought, of the promptitude with which it appro- priated from its complex intellectual and religious environment such categories as it could convert to its own use. Since the connotation of the word is assumed to be familiar to the Apostle's readers, it is evident that it must have played an important part in the speculations of the Colossian heresy, as it did also in the Hermetic theology (R. Reitzen- stein, Poimandres, l'J04, p. 26). In the developed Gnostic systems of the 2nd cent., and especially in the scheme of Valentinus, the conception of the Pleroma became increasingly prominent, as signi- fying the totality of the Divine emanations. But for a full account of the Gnostic usage, the reader is referred to Lightfoot's exhaustive note (see Literature) or, in briefer compass, to the artt. ' Pleroma' in HDB and ' Fulness ' in DCG.
The problem with which religious thought was wrestling, as for centuries it had done and was still to do, was how to relate the transcendent God to the existent universe, to effect a transition from eternal spirit to the material or phenomenal, from the absolutely good to the imperfect and evil. And in Colossse the solution was sought not in a (inostic series of emanations, but, on the lines of Judaistic speculation, in a hierarchy of 'principalities,' ' dominions,' and ' powers,' the aroixela who ruled the physical elements and the lower world, among whom the Divine Pleroma was, as it were, dis- tributed, and to whose generally hostile rule men were continually subject. Against this doctrine, without denying the existence and activity of such beings, St. Paul lifts up his magnificent truth of the ' Cosmic Christ ' and his vision of a ' Christian- ized universe.' Christ is not one of a series of mediators ; in Him the whole Pleroma dwells. He is not only Head of the Church, but Head over all things, delivering His people from bondage to the hostile elements, and translating them into His own Kingdom, that new cosmic order in which God will finally reconcile all things unto Himself.
In Ephesians the emphasis is not so much upon Christ's possession of the Divine Pleroma as upon His communication of it to the Church. The Church is His Body, 'the pleroma of him that filleth all in all' (1'''^; for exegetical details, see Armitage Robinson in loc). Whether vXripixifia be understood in an active sense (the Church is Christ's complement, that by which He is completed as the head is by the body) or in a passive sense (the Church is Christ's fulness, because His fulness is imparted to it and dwells in it), the result is prac- tically the same — the one sense implies the other. The Church is the living receptacle and instrument of all that is in Christ, all grace and truth, all purpose and power. But the ideal character thus claimed for the Church is yet to be achieved in the sphere of human aspiration and effort. Its rich diversity of gifts and ministries is bestowed for this very end, that ' we all ' may be brought to that unity and many-sided completeness of spirit- ual life in which we shall collectively form a ' per- fect man,' attaining thus to the ' measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (4'^). And, as in the Apostle's thought the fulness of the Godhead descends through the One Mediator to the Church, so again it ascends through Him to the first crea- tive source. The end of all prayer and of all at- tainment is ' that we may be filled unto all the fulness of God' (3'*). The Church, redeemtd humanity in its vital spiritual unit3% grown at last to a 'perfect man,' to the 'fulness of Christ,' which is the ' fulness of God ' ; God thus possess- ing in man the fulfilment of His eternal purpose, His perfect image, the consummate organ of His Spirit — even this is possible to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think (3-").
LiTERATiRE.— Artt. ' Pleroma ' in HDB, 'Fulness' in DCG; C. F. A. Fritzsche, Pauli ad Romanos Epixtola, 1836-43, ii. 4G9ff. ; J. B. Ligiitfoot, Colosaiansi, 1879, p. 257 ff. ; J. Armi- tage Robinson, Ephesians, 1903, p. 255 ff. ; H. A. W. Meyer, Coiniiiriitari/ on the XT, ' Philippians and Colossians,' 1875, ' Eptiesians and Philemon,' 18S0 ; Erich Haupt,!/)('c (iefnngen- schaj'tsbiiej'e'! in Meyer's Komme.ntar zurn NT, 1902 ; D. Somerville, St. Paul's Conception of Christ, 1897, j). 156 ff. ; J. Denney, Jesiisand the Gospel, 1908, p. 29 ff. ; M. Dibelius, Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des Paulus, 1909 ; W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, 1907, p. 267.
Robert Law. FUTURE LIFE See Eschatology.
GAD
GALATIA
42;
G
GAD.— See Tribes.
GAIUS (rdios = Caius, a Latin name, very common as a lioman prtenomen). — 1. In 1 Co I''*, a member of the Church of Corinth, baptized by St. Paul, who points out that in his case, as in the case of Crispus and in that of ' the liousehold of Stephanas,' he thus deviated from his usual practice. Crispus was ' the ruler of the synagogue ' (Ac 18*), and Gains was presumably also a convert of some importance.