PLEROMA (πλήρωμα). - Technical term of the gnosis of Valentinus and his followers (Marcus, Ptolemy, Pistis Sophia, etc.). The word, which was also in use outside gnosis (e.g., Rom. 11:25, 15:29; Col. 1:19, 2:9, etc.), means in gnosis the totality of the intellectual world in God. Everything that comes from the dialectic of divine thought (syzygiae) is a complete product, whereas what comes from a single one is not a pleroma, but an image (v. Clem. Alex., Strom., IV, 13; Excerpta ex Theodoto, 32, 1). Christ, according to Exc. ex Theod., 33, 3, withdrew into the pleroma (systellein) when he came forth from the thought of the mother. This speculation of gnosis is perhaps of Jewish origin, because the doctrine of the production of pairs in the divine mind, as the speculation of the pseudo-Clementine writings shows, is based on the opposition of biblical terms, but also the doctrine of contraction (tsimtsum) after the expansion of the šēkhīnah was known in Jewish mysticism.

Bibliography

BIBL.: for the concept of the pleroma in Valentinian gnosis, v. F. M. Sagnard, La gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de la Irénée, Paris 1947, passim. On the contraction of the divine šēkhīnah in Jewish gnosis, v. G. Scholem, Les grands courants de la mystique ruine, ibid. 1950, p. 279 ff. and notes p. 412 ff. For the Jewish šēkhīnah, v. W. Beak, in Monatschr. für Gesch. und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 69 (1925), p. 268.

Erik Peterson

@incollection{ec9_pleroma_pleroma, author = {Peterson, Erik}, title = {Pleroma (ΠΛΉΡΩΜΑ)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {1626--1627}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pleroma-pleroma} }

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