COMMA GIOVANNEO. – A celebrated verse inserted in the First Epistle of St. John concerning the three heavenly witnesses who attest to the divinity of Jesus
Christ, one of the classical texts for establishing the distinction of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity and the unity of the divine Substance: “There are three who bear witness in Heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three who bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one” (I Io. 5, 7).
I. THE PROBLEM
Its authenticity, long admitted on the basis of the “received Greek text” and the Vulgate, is today universally rejected. No modern critical edition of the Greek text, whether Protestant (Nestle) or Catholic (Vogela, Merk, Bover), contains II.The controversy began with the first two editions of the New Testament by Erasmus, which had omitted it; among Protestants it continued until around the middle of the nineteenth century, and among Catholics until the beginning of the twentieth. As the dispute grew more heated, the Holy Office declared that its authenticity could not be tuto denied or called into doubt (AAS, 29 [1897], p. 637). Nevertheless, to forestall overly restrictive interpretations, the Church—both through unofficial statements issued immediately after the publication of the decree and through the practice it adopted, and above all through the official interpretation given on 2 June 1927 (Euchiridium Biblicum, no. 121)—demonstrated that it in no way intended to close the controversy or to prevent Catholic exegetes from continuing their research and, if appropriate, inclining toward the negative solution.
II. THE FACTS
The Johannine Comma, which was unknown to the Greek manuscripts, with the exception of three (from the sixteenth century and influenced by the Vulgate), unknown to the Greek Fathers, who would have had many opportunities to use it in Trinitarian controversies, and even unknown to those who comment on I John, and finally unknown to the Eastern versions, appeared only in the Latin West, and at a relatively late period.The ancient Latin Fathers do not know it: Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Leo the Great, and even, in the eighth century, St. Bede, although he comments on the entire epistle. The allusions that have been detected in certain writers, such as Tertullian and especially Cyprian, are explained by the fact that V. 8 was interpreted in a Trinitarian sense. The same may be said of Potamius of Lisbon (around 350). Likewise, the manuscripts of the ancient Latin version (apart from the fragments of Prisinga, seventh century, and a Parisian codex from the thirteenth century that practically reproduces the text of the Vulgate) ignore II. It is encountered only from the fourth century onward, localized in Spain, and in forms that diverge considerably from one another, sometimes heterodox.
In the Vulgate, where it was given currency by the apocryphal prologue to the Catholic Epistles, composed, apparently, for this purpose, it is visibly of secondary origin. In fact, all the most ancient texts omit it; up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries it is found only in certain manuscripts of Spanish origin or influence. The Anglican editor White rightly omits it (minor edition, 1911), and Merk, although he retains the text of the Sixto-Clementine edition, indicates the omission as the preferable reading (4th ed., 1942).
III. ORIGIN OF THE C. G. — It is highly probable that the c. g. owes its origin to the Trinitarian interpretation of V. 8 (three earthly witnesses), as, for example, in St. Augustine’s Contra Maximinum (PL 42, 794).
Indeed, in the oldest witnesses down to the 11th century it is found written after V. 8, as an explanation of this verse. The gloss, probably originally marginal, must have entered the text in some manuscripts of the Old Latin in Spain or perhaps in Africa, in any event before Priscillian or the author of the Liber Apologeticus (around the year 380, ed. Scheps, CSEL, XVIII, p. 6); the latter seems
to cite the c. g. as an accepted text, and on this point was not attacked at all by his opponents.
IV. VALUE OF THE C. G. — Unknown to the Greek and Eastern Churches as well as to the ancient Latin Vulgate, the c. g. does not belong to the First Epistle of John; therefore, it is not part of the Scriptures declared «sacred and canonical» by the Council of Trent. But since the Church recognized in it the exact expression of her faith, it certainly constitutes an argument from tradition, and as such theologians have readily used it for a quarter of a century.