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3. The Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7)
In the Textus Receptus
1 John 5:7-8 reads as follows:
- For there are three that bear witness IN HEAVEN, THE FATHER, THE
WORD, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT: AND THESE THREE ARE ONE.
- AND THERE ARE THREE THAT BEAR WITNESS IN EARTH,
the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
The words printed in capital letters constitute the so-called Johannine
comma, the best known of the Latin Vulgate readings of the Textus Receptus, a reading which, on believing
principles, must be regarded as possibly genuine. This comma has
been the occasion of much controversy and is still an object of interest
to textual critics. One of the more recent discussions of it is found
in Windisch's Katholischen Briefe
(revised by Preisker, 1951);
(26) a more
accessible treatment of it in English is that provided by A. D. Brooke (1912)
in the International Critical Commentary.
(27)
Metzger (1964) also deals with this passage in his handbook, but briefly.
(28)
(a) How the Johannine Comma Entered the
Textus Receptus
As has been observed above, the Textus
Receptus has both its human
aspect and its divine aspect, like the Protestant Reformation itself
or any other work of God's providence. And when we consider the manner
in which the Johannine comma entered the Textus Receptus,
we see this human element at work. Erasmus omitted the Johannine
comma from the first edition (1516) of his printed Greek New
Testament on the ground that it occurred only in the Latin version
and not in any Greek manuscript. To quiet the outcry that arose, he
agreed to restore it if but one Greek manuscript could be found which
contained it. When one such manuscript was discovered soon afterwards,
bound by his promise, he included the disputed reading in his third
edition (1522), and thus it gained a permanent place in the Textus
Receptus. The manuscript which forced Erasmus to reverse his stand
seems to have been 61, a 15th or 16th-century manuscript now kept
at Trinity College, Dublin. Many critics believe that this manuscript
was written at Oxford about 1520 for the special purpose of refuting
Erasmus, and this is what Erasmus himself suggested in his notes.
The Johannine comma is also found in Codex Ravianus, in the margin of 88, and
in 629. The evidence of these three manuscripts, however, is not regarded
as very weighty, since the first two are thought to have taken this
disputed reading from early printed Greek texts and the latter (like
61) from the Vulgate.
But whatever may have been the immediate cause, still, in the last
analysis, it was not trickery which was responsible for the inclusion
of the Johannine comma in the Textus
Receptus but the usage
of the Latin-speaking Church. It was this usage which made men feel
that this reading ought to be included in the Greek text and eager
to keep it there after its inclusion had been accomplished. Back of
this usage, we may well believe, was the guiding providence of God,
and therefore the Johannine comma ought to be retained as
at least possibly genuine.
(b) The Early Existence of the Johannine Comma
Evidence for the early existence of the Johannine comma is
found in the Latin versions and in the writings of the Latin Church
Fathers. For example, it seems to have been quoted at Carthage by
Cyprian (c. 250) who writes as follows: "And again concerning the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit it is written: and the
Three are One."
(29) It
is true that Facundus, a 6th-century African bishop, interpreted Cyprian
as referring to the following verse,
(30)
but, as Scrivener (1833) remarks,
it is "surely safer and more candid" to admit that Cyprian read the
Johannine comma in his New Testament manuscript "than to
resort to the explanation of Facundus." (31)
The first undisputed citations of the Johannine comma occur
in the writing of two 4th-century Spanish bishops, Priscillian, (32)
who in 385 was beheaded by the Emperor Maximus on the charge of sorcery and
heresy, and Idacius Clarus,
(33)
Priscillian's principal adversary
and accuser. In the 5th century the Johannine comma was quoted
by several orthodox African writers to defend the doctrine of the
Trinity against the gainsaying of the Vandals, who ruled North Africa
from 489 to 534 and were fanatically attached to the Arian heresy.
(34)
And about the same time it was cited by Cassiodorus (480-570), in Italy. (35) The comma
is also found in r an Old Latin manuscript of the 5th or 6th
century, and in the Speculum, a treatise which contains an Old
Latin text. It was not included in Jerome's original edition of the Latin
Vulgate but around the year 800 it was taken into the text of the Vulgate
from the Old Latin manuscripts. It was found in the great mass of
the later Vulgate manuscripts and in the Clementine edition of the
Vulgate, the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.
(c) Is the Johannine Comma an Interpolation?
Thus on the basis of the external evidence it is at least possible
that the Johannine comma is a reading that somehow dropped
out of the Greek New Testament text but was preserved in the Latin
text through the usage of the Latin-speaking Church, and this possibility
grows more and more toward probability as we consider the internal
evidence.
In the first place, how did the Johannine comma originate
if it be not genuine, and how did it come to be interpolated into
the Latin New Testament text? To this question modern scholars have
a ready answer. It arose, they say, as a trinitarian interpretation
of I John 5:8, which originally read as follows: For there are
three that bear witness, the spirit, and the water, and the
blood: and these three agree in one. Augustine was one of those
who interpreted 1 John 5:8 as referring to the Trinity. "If we
wish to inquire about these things, what they signify, not absurdly does
the Trinity suggest Itself, who is the one, only, true, and highest
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, concerning whom it could most truly
be said, Three are Witnesses, and the Three are One. By the
word spirit we consider God the Father to be signified,
concerning the worship of whom the Lord spoke, when He said, God
is a spirit. By the word blood the Son is signified,
because the Word was made flesh. And by the word water
we understand the Holy Spirit. For when Jesus spoke concerning
the water which He was about to give the thirsty, the evangelist says,
This He spake concerning the Spirit whom those that believed in
Him would receive. "
(36)
Thus, according to the critical theory, there grew up in the Latin
speaking regions of ancient Christendom a trinitarian interpretation
of the spirit, the water, and the blood mentioned in 1 John
5:8, the spirit signifying the Father, the blood the
Son, and the water the Holy Spirit. And out of this trinitarian
interpretation of 1 John 5:8 developed the Johannine comma, which
contrasts the witness of the Holy Trinity in heaven with the witness
of the spirit, the water, and the blood on earth.
But just at this point the critical theory encounters a serious
difficulty. If the comma originated in a trinitarian
interpretation of 1 John 5:8, why does it not contain the usual
trinitarian formula, namely, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit? Why does it exhibit the singular combination, never met
with elsewhere, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit?
According to some critics, this unusual phraseology was due to the
efforts of the interpolator who first inserted the Johannine comma
into the New Testament text. In a mistaken attempt to imitate
the style of the Apostle John, he changed the term Son to
the term Word. But this is to attribute to the interpolator
a craftiness which thwarted his own purpose in making this interpolation,
which was surely to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity, including
the eternal generation of the Son. With this as his main concern it
is very unlikely that he would abandon the time-honored formula, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, and devise an altogether new one, Father,
Word, and Holy Spirit.
In the second place, the omission of the Johannine comma seems
to leave the passage incomplete. For it is a common scriptural usage
to present solemn truths or warnings in groups of three or four, for
example, the repeated Three things, yea four of Proverbs 30,
and the constantly recurring refrain, for three transgressions
and for four, of the prophet Amos. In Genesis 40 the butler saw
three branches and the baker saw three baskets. And
in Matt. 12:40 Jesus says,
As Jonas was three days and three nights
in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three
nights in the heart of the earth. It is in accord with biblical
usage, therefore, to expect that in 1 John 5:7-8 the formula,
there are three that bear witness, will be repeated at least twice.
When the Johannine comma is included, the formula
is repeated twice. When the comma is omitted, the formula is repeated
only once, which seems strange.
In the third place, the omission of the Johannine comma involves
a grammatical difficulty. The words spirit, water, and blood
are neuter in gender, but in 1 John 5:8 they are treated as
masculine. If the Johannine comma is rejected, it is hard
to explain this irregularity. It is usually said that in 1 John 5:8
the spirit, the water, and the blood are personalized and
that this is the reason for the adoption of the masculine gender.
But it is hard to see how such personalization would involve the change
from the neuter to the masculine. For in verse 6 the word Spirit plainly
refers to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity.
Surely in this verse the word Spirit is "personalized," and
yet the neuter gender is used. Therefore since personalization did
not bring about a change of gender in verse 6, it cannot fairly be
pleaded as the reason for such a change in verse 8. If, however, the
Johannine comma is retained, a reason for placing the neuter
nouns spirit, water, and blood in the masculine
gender becomes readily apparent. It was due to the influence of the
nouns Father and Word, which are masculine. Thus
the hypothesis that the Johannine comma is an interpolation
is full of difficulties.
(d) Reasons for the Possible Omission of the Johannine
Comma
For the absence of the Johannine comma from all New Testament
documents save those of the Latin-speaking West the following explanations
are possible.
In the first place, it must be remembered that the comma could
easily have been omitted accidentally through a common type of error
which is called homoioteleuton (similar ending). A scribe
copying 1 John 5:7-8 under distracting conditions might have begun
to write down these words of verse 7, there are three that bear
witness, but have been forced to look up before his pen had completed
this task. When he resumed his work, his eye fell by mistake on the
identical expression in verse 8. This error would cause him to omit
all of the Johannine comma except the words in earth,
and these might easily have been dropped later in the copying
of this faulty copy. Such an accidental omission might even have occurred
several times, and in this way there might have grown up a considerable
number of Greek manuscripts which did not contain this reading.
In the second place, it must be remembered that during the 2nd and
3rd centuries (between 220 and 270, according to Harnack); (37)
the heresy which orthodox Christians
were called upon to combat was not Arianism (since this error had
not yet arisen) but Sabellianism (so named after Sabellius, one of
its principal promoters), according to which the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit were one in the sense that they were identical.
Those that advocated this heretical view were called Patripassians
(Father-sufferers), because they believed that God the Father,
being identical with Christ, suffered and died upon the cross, and
Monarchians, because they claimed to uphold the Monarchy
(sole-government) of God.
It is possible, therefore, that the Sabellian heresy brought the
Johannine comma into disfavor with orthodox Christians. The
statement, these three are one, no doubt seemed to them to
teach the Sabellian view that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
were identical. And if during the course of the controversy manuscripts
were discovered which had lost this reading in the accidental manner
described above, it is easy to see how the orthodox party would consider
these mutilated manuscripts to represent the true text and regard
the Johannine comma as a heretical addition. In the
Greek-speaking East especially the comma would be unanimously
rejected, for here the struggle against Sabellianism was particularly
severe.
Thus it was not impossible that during the 3rd century amid the stress
and strain of the Sabellian controversy, the Johannine comma lost
its place in the Greek text, but was preserved in the Latin texts
of Africa and Spain, where the influence of Sabellianism was probably
not so great. In other words, it is not impossible that the Johannine
comma was one of those few true readings of the Latin Vulgate
not occurring in the Traditional Greek Text but incorporated into
the Textus Receptus
under the guiding providence of God. In these
rare instances God called upon the usage of the Latin-speaking Church
to correct the usage of the Greek speaking Church. (38)
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Some sermon material when taken from the NIV, not the Authorized Version, could
be compared to teaching political history without considering the
spiritual authority of the Pope. That is, by (1 John 5:7-8)
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word,
and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that
bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and
these three agree in one," there is a counsel of heavenly witnesses
as well as witnesses on earth. The NIV mutilates verses 7-8 by excluding
the heavenly witnesses of verse 7, i.e., "For there are three that testify:
the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement."
My NIV at home
includes a footnote:
bibles.n7nz.org