Comma Ioanneum

COMMA IOANNEUM. - Famous 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 classic texts for establishing the distinction of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity and the unity of the divine Substance: "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 on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one" (1 Jn. 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 (Vogels, Merk, Bover), contains it.

The controversy began with the first two editions of Erasmus's New Testament, which had omitted it; it continued among Protestants until around the middle of the 19th century, and among Catholics until the beginning of the 20th. As the struggle intensified, the Holy Office declared that its authenticity could not tuto be denied or called into doubt (AAS, 29 [1897], p. 637). Nevertheless, in order to guard against overly strict interpretations, the Church — both through unofficial declarations issued immediately after the publication of the decree, and through the practice she adopted, and above all through the official interpretation given on 2 June 1927 (Enchiridion Biblicum, n. 121) — showed that she by no means intended to close the controversy or to prevent Catholic exegetes from continuing their research and eventually leaning toward the negative solution.

II. THE FACTS

The Johannine Comma, which was unknown to the Greek manuscripts, except for three (from the 16th century and influenced by the Vulgate), unknown to the Greek Fathers, who would have had many occasions to use it in the Trinitarian controversies, and even to those who comment on 1 John, unknown finally 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 still in the 8th century St. Bede, although the latter 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 (ca. 350). Likewise the manuscripts of the ancient Latin version (except for the fragments of Priscillian, 7th century, and a Paris manuscript of the 13th century that practically reproduces the text of the Vulgate) ignore it. It is encountered only from the 4th century onward, localized in Spain, and in forms fairly divergent from one another, sometimes heterodox.

In the Vulgate, in which it was accredited by the apocryphal prologue to the catholic epistles composed, it seems, for this purpose, it is visibly of secondary origin. In fact all the most ancient texts omit it; down to the 11th-12th centuries only certain manuscripts of Spanish origin or influence contain it. With good reason the Anglican editor White omits it (minor edition, 1911) and Merk, although he retains the text of the Sixto-Clementine edition, marks the omission as the reading to be preferred (4th ed., 1942).

III. ORIGIN OF THE COMMA IOANNEUM

It is quite likely 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).

In fact, in the oldest witnesses up to the 11th century it is found inscribed after v. 8, as an explanation of this verse. The gloss, probably marginal in origin, must have passed into the text in certain manuscripts of the Old Latin in Spain or perhaps in Africa, in any case before Priscillian or the author of the Liber Apologeticus (around the year 380, ed. Scheps, CSEL, XVIII, p. 6); this seems to cite the c. g. as an accepted text, and, on this point, it was not attacked at all by its adversaries.

IV. VALUE OF THE COMMA IOANNEUM

Unknown to the Greek and Eastern Churches as well as to the ancient Latin Vulgate, the c. g. does not belong to the first Johannine epistle; 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 its faith, it certainly constitutes an argument from tradition, and as such for a quarter of a century theologians have willingly used it.

Stanislao Lyonnet