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“royal priesthood” (1 Pet. ii. 9) and the ‘Church of the Firstborn ” (Heb. xii. 23). It is this supreme idea of the Church as a spiritual order the essence of which is a living relation to Christ, that receives further expression in the profound sen- tence with which the paragraph closes. The great difficulty here is with the term πλήρωμα itself, The other terms are easier. For the πάντα of the TR, which has the most meagre attestation, τὰ πάντα (supported by the great uncials, etc.) must be substituted (with Beng., Griesb., LT Tr WHRV). The ‘‘all ” therefore must be taken here in the sense which it has in i. to— the all,” the whole system of things, made by Christ and having in Him the ground of its being, its continuance, its order (Heb. 1.-3; Col. 1. 16, 17; 1 Cor. viii. 6). The ἐν πᾶσιν will have a corre- sponding extension of meaning, ‘ with all things,” not merely with all blessings, gifts or spiritual requirements. The universe itself and all the things that make its fulness (cf. “the earth . . . and the fulness thereof,” Ps. xxiv. 1) are alike made and maintained by Christ. The prep. is taken by some in its primary force of in. But it is difficult then to find a natural sense for the clause; the inter- pretations proposed, ¢.g., ‘‘in all points”’ (Harless), ‘in all modes of manifesta- tion” (Bleek), etc., going beyond the actual terms. It is best to understand it as the instrumental év, of which we have an instance in ch. ν. 18 (Mey., Ell., ΑΙ, and most) “with all things”. Some strangely take ἐν πᾶσιν as masc. here, supposing the point to be that Christ supplies in all His believing members all the things with which they need to be provided (Haupt, Moule). The πληρου- μένου may be a pure passive, and so it is taken by some (Vulg., Chrys., etc.). In that case Christ would be described as Him- self ‘‘filled as to all things’’. It occurs, however, also as a middle with an active sense (Xen., Hell., v., 4, 56; vi., 2, 14, etc.). So it is rendered here by some of the Versions (Syr., Copt., Goth., Arm.), and the sense of “filling” best suits the context. The middle, however, probably retains something of its proper reciprocal or reflexive force, conveying the idea of filling the totality of things for Himself. What is to be said now of the term πλήρωμα itself? There are some inter- pretations which may at once be set aside, e.g., the means of fulfilling (Rick.), the Church being described as the medium or instrument by which Christ accom- plishes His destined work of bringing all things back to God; coetus numer-
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osus, with reference to the multitude of those who are subject to Christ (Storr, Rosenm., etc.) ; perfection, in the objec- tive sense of the term, the Church being Christ’s perfect work (Oltr.)—a meaning which goes beyond the term itself ; the totality of the aeons, in the Gnostic sense, Christ and the Church being viewed here in union and the two ideas, “that which makes full” and “ that which is made full,’ being supposed to pass over the one into the other (Baur). The choice is between the active sense of “ that which fills or completes and the passive sense of ‘that which is filled”. The former is favoured by Chrys., GEcum., Aquin., Schwegler, Abb., etc., and it must be admitted to be linguistically pos- sible. Verbals in -pa, it is true, have usually the pass. sense, and this one formed from πληροῦν (which means both to fill and to fulfil) would most nat- urally be taken as = “ that which is filled,” or “that which is fulfilled or com- pleted". It is argued indeed by Light. in a weighty dissertation on ‘‘ The mean- ing of πλήρωμα” (Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, pp. 257-273) that nouns of this formation are always passive, expressing either the pro- duct of the action denoted by the active verb, or that action itself regarded as a completed thing ; and further that in the case of πλή if we follow out the idea of fulfilling rather than that of filling, we shall not require to give it now an active sense and again a passive, but shall be able to take it in all its occurrences as a real passive, denoting result in one aspect or another. But, while it is possible enough to understand it in this way in all the passages in the Epistles, it is difficult to carry the passivesense through the various occurrences in the Gospels (e.g., Matt. ix. 16; Mark ii. 27, viii. 20). Nor does it seem easy to adjust the properly passive sense to all the passages either in the LXX (cf. Ezek. v. 2; Ὠαλ. x. 3), or in profane Greek (e.g., Soph., Trach., 1203 ; Eurip., Troad., 824; Philo, de Abr., ii., p. 39), without putting somewhat strained inter-