5:7-8 A handful of late
Greek manuscripts, along with a few medieval Vulgate manuscripts and the
Clementine Vulgate of 1592, expand these verses with the line: “There are three
who give witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and
these three are one” (inserted either in 5:7 or in 5:8 with minimal variation).
This is known as the “Johannine Comma” or the “heavenly witnesses” text.
Despite the fact that this line is a clear expression of trinitarian doctrine,
the Holy Office decreed in 1927 that Catholic scholarship, after careful
examination of the manuscript evidence, is not bound to accept the text as part
of the original wording of 1 John. The reading does not appear in the Nova
Vulgata, the updated edition of the Latin Vulgate Bible approved by Pope John
Paul II (1979). (The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, ed. Scott Hahn and
Curtis J. Mitch [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024], 2224)
The Johannine Comma
[From the Decree of the Holy
Office, January 13, 1897, and the Declaration of the Holy Office, June 2, 1927]
2198 [DS 3681] To the question: “Whether it can safely be denied,
or at least called into doubt that the text of St. John in the first epistle,
chapter 5, verse 7, is authentic, which read as follows: ‘And there are three
that give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And
these three are one?’ ”—the response was given on January 13, 1897: In the
negative.
[DS 3682] At this response there arose on June 2, 1927, the
following declaration, at first given privately by the same Sacred Congregation
and afterwards repeated many times, which was made a part of public law in EB
n. 121 by authority of the Holy Office itself:
“This decree was passed to check
the audacity of private teachers who attributed to themselves the right either
of rejecting entirely the authenticity of the Johannine comma, or at least of
calling it into question by their own final judgment. But it was not meant at
all to prevent Catholic writers from investigating the subject more fully and,
after weighing the arguments accurately on both sides, with that moderation and
temperance which the gravity of the subject requires, from inclining toward an
opinion in opposition to its authenticity, provided they professed that they
were ready to abide by the judgment of the Church, to which the duty was
delegated by Jesus Christ not only of interpreting Holy Scripture but also of
guarding it faithfully.” (The Sources of Catholic Dogma, ed. Henry
Denzinger and Karl Rahner [trans. Roy J. Deferrari; St. Louis, Miss.: B. Herder
Book Co., 1954], 569-70)