Section 229
168The use of the middle voice to denote the doing of something in one’s own interest.
169J. A. Robinson, Ephesians, p. 43; “it is so startling as to be improbable” (E. Best, One Body in Christ, p. 143).
170E. Best, however, does not find this necessary: “He who fills the Church is himself being filled” with the plērōma of deity (One Body in Christ, p. 143). Cf. W. L. Knox, St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge, 1939), pp. 164, 186.
171Gk. ἵνα πληϱώσῃ τὰ πάντα. The Latin versions are unanimous in treating πληϱουμένου in Eph. 1:23 as passive (cf. Vulgate: “qui omnia in omnibus adimpletur”), as do the other ancient versions apart from the Syriac Peshitta.
172H. Chadwick, “Die Absicht des Epheserbriefes,” p. 152; “Ephesians,” p. 983: Christ’s relation to the church is analogous to God’s relation to “the cosmic hierarchy.”
173Cf. John 1:16, ἐϰ τοῦ πληϱώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν.