Its uses in Classical writers.
This indeed is the primary sense to which its commonest usages in classical Greek can be most conveniently referred. Thus it signifies (1) |(1) ‘A ship’s crew.’| ‘A ship’s crew’: e.g. Xen. Hell. i. 6. 16 διὰ τὸ ἐκ πολλῶν πληρωμάτων ἐς ὀλίγας (ναῦς) ἐκλελέχθαι τοὺς ἀρίστους ἐρέτας. In this sense, which is very frequent, it is generally explained as having an active force, ‘that which fills the ships’; and this very obvious explanation is recommended by the fact that πληροῦν ναῦν is a recognized expression for ‘manning a ship’, e.g. Xen. Hell. i. 6. 24. But πλήρωμα is used not only of the crew which mans a ship, but also of the ship which is manned with a crew; e.g. Polyb. i. 49. 4, 5 τὴν παρουσίαν τῶν πληρωμάτων ... τὰ προσφάτως παραγεγονότα πληρώματα, Lucian Ver. Hist. ii. 37, 38, ἀπὸ δύο πληρωμάτων ἐμάχοντο ... πέντε γὰρ εἶχον πληρώματα; and it is difficult to see how the word could be transferred from the crew to the ship as a whole, if the common explanation were correct. Fritzsche (Rom. II. p. 469 sq.), to whom I am chiefly indebted for the passages quoted in this paragraph, has boldly given the word two directly opposite senses in the two cases, explaining it in the one ‘ea quibus naves complentur, h. e. vel socii navales vel milites classiarii vel utrique’, and in the other ‘id quod completur, v. c. navigium’; but this severance of meaning can hardly be maintained. On the other hand, if we suppose that the crew is so called as ‘the complement,’ (i.e. ‘not that which fills the ship,’ but ‘that which is itself full or complete in respect of the ship’), we preserve the passive sense of the word, while at the same time the transference to the fully equipped and manned vessel itself becomes natural. In this sense ‘a complement’ we have the word used again of an army, |(2) ‘Population.’|Aristid. Or. I. p. 381 μήτε αὐτάρκεις εσἔσθαι πλήρωμα ἑνὸς οἰκέιου στρατεύματος παρασχέσθαι. (2) It sometimes signifies ‘the population of a city’, Arist. Pol. iii. 13 (p. 1284) μὴ μέντοι δυνατοὶ πλήρωμα παρασχέσθαι πόλεως (comp. iv. 4, p. 1291). Clearly the same idea of completeness underlies this meaning of the word, so that here again it signifies ‘the complement’: comp. Dion. Hal. A. R. vi. 51 τοῦ δ’ ὀλίγου καὶ οὐκ ἀξιομάχου πληρώματος τὸ πλεῖόν ἐστι δημοτικόν κ.τ.λ., Eur. Ion 663 τῶν φίλων πλήρωμ’ ἀθροίσας ‘the whole body of his friends’. |(3) ‘Total amount.’|(3) ‘The entire sum’, Arist. Vesp. 660 τούτων πλήρωμα τάλαντ’ ἐγγὺς δισχίλια γίγνεται ἡμῖν, ‘From these sources a total of nearly two thousand talents accrues to us’. |(4) ‘Entire term.’|(4) ‘The full term’, Herod. iii. 22 ὀγδώκοντα δ’ ἔτεα ζόης πλήρωμα ἀνδρὶ μακρότατον προκέεσθαι. |(5) ‘Fulfilment.’|(5) ‘The perfect attainment’, ‘the full accomplishment’, e.g. Philo de Abr. 46 (II. p. 39) πλήρωμα χρηστῶν ἐλπίδων. In short the fundamental meaning of the word generally, though perhaps not universally, is neither ‘the filling material’, nor ‘the vessel filled’; but ‘that which is complete in itself’, or in other words ‘plenitude, fulness, totality, abundance’.
Matt. ix. 16.
In the Gospels the uses of the word present some difficulty. (1) In Matt. ix. 16 αἴρει γὰρ τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱματίου καὶ χεῖρον σχίσμα γίνεται, it refers to the ἐπίβλημα ῥάκους ἀγνάφου which has gone before; but πλήρωμα need not therefore be equivalent to ἐπίβλημα so as to mean the patch itself, as is often assumed. The following pronoun αὐτοῦ is most naturally referred to ἐπίβλημα; and if so πλήρωμα describes ‘the completeness’, which results from the patch. The statement is thus thrown into the form of a direct paradox, the very completeness making the garment more imperfect than before. |Mark ii. 21.|In the parallel passage Mark ii. 21 the variations are numerous, but the right reading seems certainly to be αἴρει τὸ πλήρωμα ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, τὸ καινὸν τοῦ παλαιοῦ κ.τ.λ. The received text omits the preposition before αὐτοῦ, but a glance at the authorities is convincing in favour of its insertion. In this case the construction will be αἴρει τὸ πλήρωμα (nom.) ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ (i.e. τοῦ ἱματίου, which has been mentioned immediately before), τὸ καινὸν (πλήρωμἀ τοῦ παλαιοῦ (ἱματίοὐ; ‘The completeness takes away from the garment, the new completeness of the old garment’, where the paradox is put still more emphatically. |Mark vi. 43.| (2) In Mark vi. 43 the right reading is καὶ ἦραν κλασμάτων δώδεκα κοφίνους πληρώματα, i.e. ‘full’ or ‘complete measures’, where the apposition to κοφίνους obviates the temptation to explain πληρώματα as ‘ea quæ implent’. |Mark viii. 20.|On the other hand in Mark viii. 20 πόσων σπυρίδων πληρώματα κλασμάτων ἤρατε; this would be the prima facie explanation; comp. Eccles. iv. 6 ἀγαθόν ἐστι πλήρωμα δρακὸς ἀναπαύσεως ὑπὲρ πληρώματα δύο δρακῶν μόχθου. But it is objectionable to give an active sense to πλήρωμα under any circumstances; and if in such passages the patch itself is meant, it must still be so called, not because it fills the hole, but because it is itself fulness or full measure as regards the defect which needs supplying.
From the Gospels we pass to the Epistles of St Paul, whose usage bears more directly on our subject. And here the evidence seems all to tend in the same direction. |1 Cor. x. 26.|(1) In 1 Cor. x. 26 τοῦ Κυρίου γὰρ ἡ γῆ καὶ τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτῆς it occurs in a quotation from Ps. xxiv (xxiii). 1. The expressions τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς γῆς, τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θαλάσσης, occur several times in the LXX (e.g. Ps. xcvi (xcv). 11, Jer. viii. 16), where τὸ πλήρωμα is a translation of מלא, a word denoting primarily ‘fulness’, but having in its secondary uses a considerable latitude of meaning ranging between ‘contents’ and ‘abundance’. This last sense seems to predominate in its Greek rendering πλήρωμα, and indeed the other is excluded altogether in some passages, e.g. Cant. v. 13 ἐπὶ πληρώματα ὑδάτων. |Rom. xiii. 10.|(2) In Rom. xiii. 10 πλήρωμα νόμου ἡ ἀγάπη, the best comment on the meaning of the word is the context, ver. 8 ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἕτερον νόμον πεπλήρωκεν, so that πλήρωμα here means the ‘completeness’ and so ‘fulfilment, accomplishment’: see the note on Gal. v. 14. |Rom. xv. 29.|(3) In Rom. xv. 29 ἐν πληρώματι εὐλογίας Χριστοῦ ἐλεύσομαι, it plainly has the sense of ‘fulness, abundance’. |Gal. iv. 4.|(4) In Gal. iv. 4 ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρονοῦ and |Eph. i. 10.|Ephes. i. 10 εἰς οἰκονομίαν τοῦ πληρώματος τῶν καιρῶν, its force is illustrated by such passages as Mark i. 15 πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία κ.τ.λ., Luke xxi. 24 ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καιροὶ ἐθνῶν (comp. Acts ii. 1, vii. 23, 30, ix. 23, xxiv. 27), so that the expressions will mean ‘the full measure of the time, the full tale of the seasons’. |Rom. xi. 25.|(5) In Rom. xi. 25 πώρωσις ἀπὸ μέρους τῷ Ἰσραὴλ γέγονεν ἄχρις ὁῦ τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν εἰσέλθῃ, it seems to mean ‘the full number’, ‘the whole body’, (whether the whole absolutely, or the whole relatively to God’s purpose), of whom only a part had hitherto been gathered into the Church. |Rom. xi. 12.|(6) In an earlier passage in this chapter the same expression occurs of the Jews, xi. 12 εἰ δὲ τὸ παράπτωμα αὐτῶν πλοῦτος κόσμου καὶ τὸ ἥττημα αὐτῶν πλοῦτος ἐθνῶν, πόσῳ μᾶλλον τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτῶν. Here the antithesis between ἥττημα and πλήρωμα, ‘failure’ and ‘fulness’, is not sufficiently direct to fix the sense of πλήρωμα; and (in the absence of anything to guide us in the context) we may fairly assume that it is used in the same sense of the Jews here, as of the Gentiles in ver. 25.
Thus, whatever hesitation may be felt about the exact force of the word as it occurs in the Gospels, yet substantially one meaning runs through all the passages hitherto quoted from St Paul. In these πλήρωμα has its proper passive force, as a derivative from πληροῦν ‘to make complete’. It is ‘the full complement, the entire measure, the plenitude, the fulness’. There is therefore a presumption in favour of this meaning in other passages where it occurs in this Apostle’s writings.
We now come to those theological passages in the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians and in the Gospel of St John, for the sake of which this investigation has been undertaken. They are as follows;
Col. i. 19 ἐν αὐτῷ εὐδόκησεν πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι.
Col. ii. 9 ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς, καὶ ἐστὲ ἐν αὐτῷ πεπληρωμένοι.
Ephes. i. 23 αὐτὸν ἔδωκεν κεφαλὴν ὑπὲρ πάντα τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἥτις ἐστὶν τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ, τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν πληρουμένου.
Ephes. iii. 19 ἵνα πληρωθῆτε εἰς πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ Θεοῦ.
Ephes. iv. 13 εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον, εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ.
John i. 14, 16 καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν (καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός) πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας ... ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν καὶ χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος.
To these should be added two passages from the Ignatian Epistles[542], which as belonging to the confines of the Apostolic age afford valuable illustration of the Apostolic language.
Ephes. inscr. Ἰγνάτιος, ὁ καὶ Θεοφόρος, τῇ εὐλογημένῃ ἐν μεγέθει Θεοῦ πατρὸς πληρώματι[543] ... τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τῇ ἀξιομακαρίστῳ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ κ.τ.λ.
Trall. inscr. Ἰγνάτιος, ὁ καὶ Θεοφόρος ... ἐκκλησίᾳ ἁγίᾳ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Τράλλεσιν ... ἣν καὶ )ασπάζομαι ἐν τῷ πληρώματι, ἐν ἀποστολικῷ χαρακτῆρι.
It will be evident, I think, from the passages in St Paul, that the word πλήρωμα ‘fulness, plenitude’, must have had a more or less definite theological value when he wrote. This inference, which is suggested by the frequency of the word, seems almost inevitable when we consider the form of the expression in the first passage quoted, Col. i. 19. The absolute use of the word, πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα ‘all the fulness’, would otherwise be unintelligible, for it does not explain itself. In my notes I have taken ὁ Θεός to be the nominative to εὐδόκησεν, but if the subject of the verb were πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα, as some suppose, the inference would be still more necessary. The word however, regarded as a theological term, does not appear to have been adopted, like so many other expressions in the Apostolic writers[544], from the nomenclature of Alexandrian Judaism. |derived from Palestine and not Alexandria.|At least no instance of its occurrence in this sense is produced from Philo. We may therefore conjecture that it had a Palestinian origin, and that the Essene Judaizers of Colossæ, whom St Paul is confronting, derived it from this source. In this case it would represent the Hebrew מלא, of which it is a translation in the LXX, and the Aramaic ܡܘܠܙܐ
or some other derivative of the same root, such being its common rendering in the Peshito.
The sense in which St Paul employs this term was doubtless the sense which he found already attached to it. He means, as he explicitly states in the second Christological passage of the Colossian Epistle (ii. 9), the pleroma, the plenitude of ‘the Godhead’ or ‘of Deity’. In the first passage (i. 19), though the word stands without the addition τῆς θεότητος, the signification required by the context is the same. The true doctrine of the one Christ, who is the absolute mediator in the creation and government of the world, is opposed to the false doctrine of a plurality of mediators, ‘thrones, dominions, principalities, powers’. An absolute and unique position is claimed for Him, because in Him resides ‘all the pleroma’, i.e. the full complement, the aggregate of the Divine attributes, virtues, energies. This is another way of expressing the fact that He is the Logos, for the Logos is the synthesis of all the various δυνάμεις, in and by which God manifests Himself whether in the kingdom of nature or in the kingdom of grace.
This application is in entire harmony with the fundamental meaning of the word. The term has been transferred to the region of theology, but in itself it conveys exactly the same idea as before. It implies that all the several elements which are required to realise the conception specified are present, and that each appears in its full proportions. |in Philo of the family|Thus Philo, describing the ideal state of prosperity which will result from absolute obedience to God’s law, mentions among other blessings the perfect development of the family: ‘Men shall be fathers and fathers too of goodly sons, and women shall be mothers of goodly children, so that each household shall be the pleroma of a numerous kindred, where no part or name is wanting of all those which are used to designate relations, whether in the ascending line, as parents, uncles, grandfathers, or again in the descending line in like manner, as brothers, nephews, sons’ sons, daughters’ sons, cousins, cousins’ sons, kinsmen of all degrees[545].’ |and in Aristotle, of the state.|So again Aristotle, criticizing the Republic of Plato, writes; ‘Socrates says that a city (or state) is composed of four classes, as its indispensable elements (τῶν ἀναγκαιοτάτων): by these he means the weaver, the husbandman, the shoemaker, and the builder; and again, because these are not sufficient by themselves, he adds the smith and persons to look after the necessary cattle, and besides them the merchant and the retail dealer: these together make up the pleroma of a city in its simplest form (ταῦτα πάντα γίνεται πλήρωμα τῆς πρώτης πόλεως); thus he assumes that a city is formed to supply the bare necessities of life (τῶν ἀναγκων χάριν) etc.’[546]. From these passages it will be seen that the adequacy implied by the word, as so used, consists not less in the variety of the elements than in the fulness of the entire quantity or number.
So far the explanation seems clear. But when we turn from the Colossian letter to the Ephesian, it is necessary to bear in mind the different aims of the two epistles. While in the former the Apostle’s main object is to assert the supremacy of the Person of Christ, in the latter his principal theme is the life and energy of the Church, as dependent on Christ[547]. So the pleroma residing in Christ is viewed from a different aspect, no longer in relation to God, so much as in relation to the Church. |Corresponding application of πληρωμα to the Church.|It is that plenitude of Divine graces and virtues which is communicated through Christ to the Church as His body. The Church, as ideally regarded, the bride ‘without spot or wrinkle or any such thing’, becomes in a manner identified with Him[548]. All the Divine graces which reside in Him are imparted to her; His ‘fulness’ is communicated to her: and thus she may be said to be His pleroma (i. 23). This is the ideal Church. The actual militant Church must be ever advancing, ever struggling towards the attainment of this ideal. Hence the Apostle describes the end of all offices and administrations in the Church to be that the collective body may attain its full and mature growth, or (in other words) may grow up to the complete stature of Christ’s fulness[549]. But Christ’s fulness is God’s fulness. Hence in another passage he prays that the brethren may by the indwelling of Christ be fulfilled till they attain to the pleroma of God (iii. 19). It is another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lord’s precept, ‘Ye shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’[550].
The Gospel of St John, written in the first instance for the same Churches to which the Epistle to the Ephesians was sent, has numerous and striking points of resemblance with St Paul’s letter. This is the case here. As St Paul tells the Ephesians that the ideal Church is the pleroma of Christ and that the militant Church must strive to become the pleroma of Christ, so St John (i. 14 sq.) after describing our Lord as μονογενής, i.e. the unique and absolute representative of the Father, and as such ‘full (πλήρης) of grace and of truth’, says that they, the disciples, had ‘received out of His pleroma’ ever fresh accessions of grace. Each individual believer in his degree receives a fraction of that pleroma which is communicated whole to the ideal Church.
The use of the word is not very different in the Ignatian letters. St Ignatius greets this same Ephesian Church, to which St Paul and St John successively here addressed the language already quoted, as ‘blessed in greatness by the pleroma of God the Father,’ i.e. by graces imparted from the pleroma. To the Trallians again he sends a greeting ‘in the pleroma’, where the word denotes the sphere of Divine gifts and operations, so that ἐν τῷ πληρώματι is almost equivalent to ἐν τῷ Κυρίῳ or ἐν τῷ πνεύματι.
When we turn from Catholic Christianity to the Gnostic sects we find this term used, though (with one important exception) not in great frequency. Probably however, if the writings of the earlier Gnostics had been preserved, we should have found that it occupied a more important place than at present appears. One class of early Gnostics separated the spiritual being Christ from the man Jesus; they supposed that the Christ entered Jesus at the time of His baptism and left him at the moment of His crucifixion. Thus the Christ was neither born as a man nor suffered as a man. In this way they obviated the difficulty, insuperable to the Gnostic mind, of conceiving the connexion between the highest spiritual agency and gross corporeal matter which was involved in the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation and Passion, and which Gnostics of another type more effectually set aside by the theory of docetism, i.e. by assuming that the human body of our Lord was only a phantom body and not real flesh and blood. Irenæus represents the former class as teaching that ‘Jesus was the receptacle of the Christ’, and that the Christ ‘descended upon him from heaven in the form of a dove and after He had declared (to mankind) the nameless Father, entered (again) into the pleroma imperceptibly and invisibly’[551]. |The Cerinthians.|Here no names are given. But in another passage he ascribes precisely the same doctrine, without however naming the pleroma, to Cerinthus[552]. And in a third passage, which links together the other two, this same father, after mentioning this heresiarch, again alludes to the doctrine which maintained that the Christ, having descended on Jesus at his baptism, ‘flew back again into His own pleroma’[553]. In this last passage indeed the opinions of Cerinthus are mentioned in connexion with those of other Gnostics, more especially the Valentinians, so that we cannot with any certainty attribute this expression to Cerinthus himself. But in the first passage the unnamed heretics who maintained this return of the Christ ‘into the pleroma’ are expressly distinguished from the Valentinians; and presumably therefore the allusion is to the Cerinthians, to whom the doctrine, though not the expression, is ascribed in the second passage. |Connexion of this use with St Paul and with the Colossian heretics.|Thus there seems to be sufficient reason for attributing the use of the term to Cerinthus[554]. This indeed is probable on other grounds. The term pleroma, we may presume, was common to St Paul and the Colossian heretics whom he controverts. To both alike it conveyed the same idea, the totality of the divine powers or attributes or agencies or manifestations. But after this the divergence begins. They maintained that a single divine power, a fraction of the pleroma, resided in our Lord: the Apostle urges on the contrary, that the whole pleroma has its abode in Him[555]. The doctrine of Cerinthus was a development of the Colossian heresy, as I have endeavoured to show above[556]. He would therefore inherit the term pleroma from it. |The pleroma localized.|At the same time he seems to have given a poetical colouring to his doctrine, and so doing to have treated the pleroma as a locality, a higher spiritual region, from which this divine power, typified by the dove-like form, issued forth as on wings, and to which, taking flight again, it reascended before the Passion. If so, his language would prepare the way for the still more elaborate poetic imagery of the Valentinians, in which the pleroma, conceived as a locality, a region, an abode of the divine powers, is conspicuous.
The attitude of later Gnostics towards this term is widely divergent. The word is not, so far as I am aware, once mentioned in connexion with the system of Basilides. Indeed the nomenclature of this heresiarch belongs to a wholly different type; and, as he altogether repudiated the doctrine of emanations[557], it is not probable that he would have any fondness for a term which was almost inextricably entangled with this doctrine.
On the other hand with Valentinus and the Valentinians the doctrine of the pleroma was the very key-stone of their system; and, since at first sight it is somewhat difficult to connect their use of the term with St Paul’s, a few words on this subject may not be out of place.
Valentinus then dressed his system in a poetic imagery not unlike the myths of his master Plato. But a myth or story involves action, and action requires a scene of action. Hence the mysteries of theology and cosmogony and redemption call for a topographical representation, and the pleroma appears not as an abstract idea, but as a locality.
The Valentinian system accordingly maps out the universe of things into two great regions, called respectively the pleroma and the kenoma, the ‘fulness’ and the ‘void’. From a Christian point of view these may be described as the kingdoms of light and of darkness respectively. |Antithesis of pleroma and kenoma.|From the side of Platonism, they are the regions of real and of phenomenal existences—the world of eternal archetypes or ideas, and the world of material and sensible things. The identification of these two antitheses was rendered easy for the Gnostic; because with him knowledge was one with morality and with salvation, and because also matter was absolutely bound up with evil. It is difficult to say whether the Platonism or the Christianity predominates in the Valentinian theology; but the former at all events is especially prominent in their conception of the relations between the pleroma and the kenoma.
The pleroma is the abode of the Æons, who are thirty in number. These Æons are successive emanations, of which the first pair sprang immediately from the preexistent Bythus or Depth. This Bythus is deity in itself, the absolute first principle, as the name suggests; the profound, unfathomable, limitless, of whom or of which nothing can be predicated and nothing known. Here again we have something like a local representation. The Æons or emanations are plainly the attributes and energies of deity; they are, or they comprise, the eternal ideas or archetypes of the Platonic philosophy. In short they are deity relative, deity under self-imposed limitations, deity derived and divided up, as it were, so as at length to be conceivable.
The topographical relation of Bythus to the derived Æons was differently given in different developments of the Valentinian teaching. According to one representation he was outside the pleroma; others placed his abode within it, but even in this case he was separated from the rest by Horus (Ὅρος), a personified Boundary or Fence, whom none, not even the Æons themselves, could pass[558]. The former mode of representation might be thought to accord better with the imagery, at the same time that it is more accurate if regarded as the embodiment of a philosophical conception. Nevertheless the latter was the favourite mode of delineation; and it had at least this recommendation, that it combined in one all that is real, as opposed to all that is phenomenal. In this pleroma every existence which is suprasensual and therefore true has its abode.
Separated from this celestial region by Horus, another Horus or Boundary, which, or who, like the former is impassable, lies the ‘kenoma’ or ‘void’—the kingdom of this world, the region of matter and material things, the land of shadow and darkness[559]. Here is the empire of the Demiurge or Creator, who is not a celestial Æon at all, but was born in this very void over which he reigns. Here reside all those phenomenal, deceptive, transitory things, of which the eternal counterparts are found only in the pleroma.
It is in this antithesis that the Platonism of the Valentinian theory reaches its climax. All things are set off one against another in these two regions[560]: just as
Not only have the thirty Æons their terrestrial counterparts; but their subdivisions also are represented in this lower region. The kenoma too has its ogdoad, its decad, its dodecad, like the pleroma[561]. There is one Sophia in the supramundane region, and another in the mundane; there is one Christ who redeems the Æons in the spiritual world, and a second Christ who redeems mankind, or rather a portion of mankind, in the sensible world. There is an Æon Man and another Æon Ecclesia in the celestial kingdom, the ideal counterparts to the Human Race and the Christian Church of the terrestrial. Even individual men and women, as we shall see presently, have their archetypes in this higher sphere of intelligible being.
The topographical conception of the pleroma moreover is carried out in the details of the imagery. The second Sophia, called also Achamoth, is the desire, the offspring, of her elder namesake, separated from her mother, cast out of the pleroma, and left ‘stranded’ in the void beyond[562], being prevented from returning by the inexorable Horus who guards the frontier of the supramundane kingdom. The second Christ—a being compounded of elements contributed by all the Æons[563]—was sent down from the pleroma, first of all at the eve of creation to infuse something like order and to provide for a spiritual element in this lower world; and secondly, when He united Himself with the man Jesus for the sake of redeeming those who were capable of redemption[564]. At the end of all things Sophia Achamoth, and with her the spiritual portion of mankind, shall be redeemed and received up into the pleroma, while the psychical portion will be left outside to form another kingdom under the dominion of their father the Demiurge. This redemption and ascension of Achamoth (by a perversion of a scriptural image) was represented as her espousals with the Saviour, the second Christ; and the pleroma, the scene of this happy union, was called the bridal-chamber[565]. Indeed the localization of the pleroma is as complete as language can make it. The constant repetition of the words ‘within’ and ‘without’, ‘above’ and ‘beneath’, in the development of this philosophical and religious myth still further impresses this local sense on the term[566].