The Johannine Comma: is 1 John 5:7 original?

The passages

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.

1 John 5:7-8

The problem

The phrase "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (and the words "in earth" in verse 8) is called the Johannine Comma. It is the clearest statement of the Trinity in the New Testament, if it belongs there. But it does not appear in any Greek manuscript earlier than about the fourteenth century, and then only in a handful. Neither Greek Fathers nor the early Trinitarian debates quote it, which is odd if it was there.

Erasmus left it out of his first two editions of the Greek New Testament (1516 and 1519). According to a story that goes back to him, he promised to include it if a Greek manuscript could be found. One was produced, probably copied for the purpose, and he added the passage in 1522. The Textus Receptus, and so the King James Version, carry it.

What believers and scholars say

Early Latin witness. The words appear in some Old Latin and Vulgate manuscripts, and were possibly quoted by Cyprian in the third century (though what Cyprian quoted is debated). Defenders argue that the Greek tradition lost the words. Most scholars think the phrase started as a marginal note on verse 8 explaining the three witnesses as Trinitarian, and that it entered the Latin text later.

Most modern translations omit it. The Revised Version, Revised Standard, NIV, ESV and others leave it out or put it in a footnote. The Catholic Church removed it from the Vulgate in the 1970s Nova Vulgata.

The doctrine stands without it. Most Trinitarian scholars say that the doctrine does not depend on this verse. They point to Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14 and the pattern of the New Testament as a whole. A few defend the King James tradition on principle and regard the omission as a loss.

Where this leaves it

The manuscript evidence is strongly against the Comma as part of John's letter. Almost no textual critic of any confession argues otherwise. Whether that matters to a reader depends on what they think a translation should follow: the oldest text that can be recovered, or the text the church used. This is a clear case in which the two differ.