On the Comma Johanneum

Daniel J. Castellano (2002)

The authenticity of the Johannine Comma has been hotly disputed, on account of it being the most explicit Scriptural witness to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Advocates of the Comma generally feel that its excision from Scripture would somehow undermine doctrine or the reliability of Scripture, and it must be admitted that many opponents of the Comma have fueled such misgivings by using it as an evidence that the Scriptures were deliberately corrupted for theological purposes. I intend to show that the theological weight of the Comma is greatly overrated, and that the dispute is therefore purely an academic one. Nonetheless, I will review the basic arguments and evidences surrounding the Comma, and attempt to account for its retention and omission by various denominations.

In most modern critical texts, which omit the Comma even as an alternate reading, 1 John 5:6-8 reads:

⁶This is the one who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water alone, but by water and blood. The Spirit is the one that testifies, and the spirit is truth. ⁷So there are three that testify, ⁸the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are one.

Texts with the Comma would render verses 7 and 8: �There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one, and three that testify on earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one.� This extended version was universally present in Tridentine Bibles, and remained in the Latin Vulgate until the Second Vatican Council.

On purely intrinsic grounds, the Johannine Comma seems a bit out of place. The sixth verse identifies water and blood, followed by the Spirit, as witnesses, so it makes more sense to immediately mention the Spirit, the water and the blood as witnesses, rather than mention the Trinity. Also, verse 6 clearly refers to the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of truth, in keeping with the usage of 1 John 4. It would be strange, therefore, for this Spirit to be considered an earthly witness as in the Comma�s version of verse 8, especially when He is also invoked as a heavenly witness. The short version has no mention of �earth,� since this distinction between earth and heaven is made necessary by the insertion of the Comma, whereas the excision of the Comma would not require the omission of the word �earth,� except to avoid the seeming contradiction of sense with verse 6. We further note that the Comma�s usage of �Holy Spirit� rather than simply �Spirit� is at odds with the rest of the Epistle. These observations do not positively exclude the Comma�s authenticity, but they definitely weaken the case that the Comma ought to be retained on account of its necessity to the text. One of the weightier aspects of this claim is the consideration that the Greek treiV, �three,� is in the masculine, when it ought to be conjugated in the neuter if it refers to three neuter objects: spirit, blood, and water. However, this irregular usage exists even in the Comma�s version, as well as elsewhere in the New Testament, so it is not a strong consideration. If we are going to quibble about Greek, we may note that in both versions the eighth verse uses the proposition eiV, which indicates that the three (earthly) witnesses are �into� or �towards� one, whereas the three heavenly witnesses are simply equated: they are one. Once again, this makes the Comma look like an awkward interpolation.

Considering the Comma as an interpolated gloss, the interpolator no doubt affirmed an explicit Trinitarian doctrine, as evidenced by his omission of the proposition eiV. Yet if we were to regard it as part of the original text, we would surely be taking it out of context by using it as a proof of the Trinity, for the three heavenly witnesses are one primarily in the sense that the three earthly witnesses are one: they all testify to the same thing, that Jesus is the Son of the God, which is the main thrust of the passage. No one would use this passage to prove that the spirit, water, and blood are of one substance, so it would be dubious to hold the same of the heavenly witnesses. Since the Comma is not an effective proof of the consubstantial nature of the Trinity except to those who already believe the doctrine, no question of doctrine depends on the reading of this passage.