Pleroma (Koinē Greek: πλήρωμα, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers.
[4] The word itself is a relative term, capable of many shades of meaning, according to the subject with which it is joined and the antithesis to which it is contrasted.
In its semi-technical application it is applied primarily to the perfection of God, the fullness of His Being, 'the aggregate of the Divine attributes, virtues, energies': this is used quite absolutely in Colossians 1:19 (oti en auto eudokesen pan to pleroma katoikesai), but further defined Secondarily, this same pleroma is transferred to Christ; it was embodied permanently in Him at the Incarnation (Colossians 1:19); it still dwells permanently in His glorified Body, en auto katoikei somatikos (Colossians 2:9); it is tou pleromatos tou christou (Ephesians 4:13), the complete, moral, and intellectual perfection to which Christians aspire and with which they are filled (Ephesians 4:13, Colossians 2:10 este en auto pepleromenoi.
This indwelling emphasizes the completeness with which the Son represents the Father; it is the fulness of life which makes Him the representative, without other intermediary agencies, and ruler of the whole universe; and it is the fulness of moral and intellectual perfection which is communicable through Him to man; it is consistent with a gradual growth of human faculties (Luke 2:40), therefore with the phrase eauton ekenosen of Philippians 2:7, which is perhaps intended as a deliberate contrast to it.
One further application of the phrase is made in (Ephesians 1:23), where it is used of the Church, to pleroma tou ta panta en pasin pleroumenou.
The analogy of the body, the stress laid on the action of the Church (Ephesians 3:10–21), the language about Paul himself in Colossians 1:24 (antanaplero ta hysteremata ton thlipseon tou christou), support this, and it is impossible to decide between the two.
The former view has been most common since the thorough examination of the word by Fritzsche[5] and Lightfoot (Col.), and was taken by von Soden (Hand-Comm.).
The Gnostic writers appeal to the use in the NT (evidenced in Irenaeus' account of their views and his corresponding refutation, Iren I. iii.
31), or of the fullness of real existence in contrast to the empty void and unreality of mere phenomena (kenoma, Iren.
.Again, each separate aeon is called a pleroma in contrast to its earthly imperfect counterpart, so that in this sense the plural can be used, pleromata (Iren.
It is still used in its ordinary untechnical meaning, e.g. Theophylact speaks of the Trinity as pleroma tou theou; but no use so technical as that in Ignatius reappears.
Dillon does this by contrasting the Noetic cosmos to passages from the Nag Hammadi, where the aeons are expressed as the thoughts of God.
What Bateson calls the "myth of power" is the epistemologically false application to Creatura of an element of Pleroma (non-living, undifferentiated).