All right, hello, my name is Christopher Thomas. I'm from the Confessional Bibliology website. And today we have the privilege of having Dr. Jeffrey Riddle do a presentation for us on 1 John 5, 7, and 8, followed by a roundtable discussion between himself and Pastor Christian McShaffrey and Pastor Julian Mursharki. He's from England, by way of Iran. But before we begin, I'd like to read for everyone a passage from 2 Corinthians 10, four and five. And this is important because it goes to a question last week, and I think to the questions this week as well. When it comes to the textual evidence, and I believe Dr. Riddle will go into this a bit, but when it comes to the textual evidence, we do not judge scripture or what is or isn't scripture based upon the evidence. We judge the evidence by scripture itself. And the key verses for this are 2 Corinthians 10, 4, and 5, which read, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but money through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that has altered itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And that's the most important thing for all of us. regardless of our textual position, is when it comes to our view of the text and how to interpret the textual evidence, we must bring that interpretation method back to scripture. If it's consistent with scripture, we're good, but if it isn't, we're sinning. And so with that, I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Jeffrey Riddle. And let's see here. Unmuted you, Jeff, go ahead and you can begin. Great. Thank you, Chris, and welcome to everybody who is in the conversation online and to those who will listen to this recording later. Again, I'm Jeff Riddle. I'm the pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church. in Louisa, Virginia, and I'm happy to be part of this roundtable discussion that we're having today. And we started this, of course, last Tuesday, and Pastor Christian McShaffrey did a presentation on John 118. And I'm going to do a presentation today on 1 John 5, 7, and 8, sometimes known as the Coma Ioaneum, or the Three Heavenly Witnesses passage. And then, God willing, next Tuesday, Brother Pouillon will do a presentation on text and apologetics. And I mentioned last week that I think there's a bit of a theme between these three topics. And one of those themes is the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of God, doctrine of Christ. John 1.18 we saw last week was pivotal in establishing the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. The passage we're looking at today is a very important passage related to the Doctrine of God, the Doctrine of the Trinity. And of course, Pastor Pujan will talk to us next week about the importance of texts in doing apologetics. And I'm sure that probably there'll be some conversation about the Doctrine of God or the Doctrine of the Trinity in that respect. So the passage we're looking at today from 1 John 5, 7, and 8 is one of the most controversial Now, those of us who accept the Textus Receptus of the Greek New Testament as the normative Christian text of the New Testament, we know that that text is one that generally is supported by the majority of extant Greek manuscripts. So when we defend the traditional ending of Mark, for example, or the woman taking an adultery passage, we know that most extant manuscripts support that text that we defend. There are, however, some passages in the Texas Receptus that are not part of the majority text, and therefore they sort of call for, I think, special consideration in how they are examined and defended. We believe that they are can be reasonably defended, but they take some special care. And I think 1 John 5, 7, and 8 has been vulnerable for criticism by those who hold to reason and eclecticism precisely because it's not one of the majority text readings. So let's begin, Christian I think set a good pattern for us last time, by hearing read the passage under discussion. So this is 1 John 5, verses 7 and 8. And it says, 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. So that's the reading from the King James Version, which is based on the Texas Receptus. And if you were to look at those verses and you were to ask, well, what is the Koma Yohaneum? It's the second part of verse seven and the first part of verse eight. Sometimes people refer to it simply as 1 John 5.7, but it more accurately should be 1 John 5.7b and 1 John 5.8a. So, it's the latter part of verse 7, in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one, and the first part of verse 8, and there are three that bear witness in earth. That is the disputed passage that is known as the Coma Ioaneum. You can draw a quick contrast if you read the English Standard Version, for example, which leaves out that portion in its translation. 1 John 5, 7 in the ESV says, for there are three that testify, and then verse 8 begins, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. So they just translate the parts before and after the so-called Koma Yoaneum and do not translate the Koma Yoaneum. We believe, however, that the Koma Ioaneum should rightly be part of the text of Scripture, the Word of God. And so it's there in the Texas Receptus editions of the Greek New Testament, like that published by the Trinitarian Bible Society, the Scribner New Testament. However, it's omitted in the N.A. 28, or in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament. So a lot of you who are in this discussion who are active in understanding these issues, you know this, but there may be people who listen to this later who maybe aren't as aware of exactly what the issue is. So that's the passage. And the question is, should the comioneum rightly be in 1 John 5, 7, and 8. Now, I want to do four things. I want to cover four things if we can. First of all, I want to look at the external evidence. I want to look at the manuscript evidence for the Coma Ioneum. Secondly, I want to look at the internal evidence. That is, does the coma fit with the language, the style, the context of 1 John? And then thirdly, I want to look at some issues related to the history of the reception of the Koma Yohaneum. And then fourthly, I want to examine a little bit the theology and we might say the apologetics angles. on what's at stake with the Coma Ionaeum. So again, those four things, if we can do that, external evidence, internal evidence, historical reception, theological apologetic dimensions of this question. So let's begin, first of all, with the external evidence question. Those who reject the Coma Ionaeum as spurious often do so based on the fact that the manuscript evidence for this disputed passage is relatively small, and many of the witnesses are late. In fact, there are currently only 10 extant manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, that bear witness to the Coma Ioaneum. Five of those have the Coma Ioaneum in the text proper, and five of those have the Coma Ioaneum in the margin. So the five that have the Coma Ioaneum in the text proper are, first of all, Codex 61, Codex Montfortianus from the 16th century, then Codex 629 from the 14th century, Codex 918 from the 16th century, Codex 2319, from the 18th century, and this is a document that's in the Romanian Academy Library, and then Codex 2473 from the 17th century, which is in the National Library in Athens, Greece. So those are the five that have the comulionium in the text proper. Then the five that have the comulionium in the margin, include Codex 88, first of all, Codex Regius from the 12th century, Codex 177, which is from the 11th century. This was just discovered in 2010 by Dan Wallace. Even though he doesn't believe in the authenticity of the coma, he did run across this in a library, I forget, somewhere in Europe, maybe in Bulgaria or or Albania or someplace. I might have been in Athens, I'm not sure. Then there's also Codex 221 from the 10th century, Codex 429, the so-called Wuffenbüttel Codex from the 14th century, and Codex 636 from the 15th century. So I've just told you all 10 Greek manuscripts that bear witness to the Coma Ionaeum. Now, one of the things I wanted to ping-pong off a little bit in this presentation is one of the most recent premier academic writings about the Koma Yohaneum. And I sent this to the fellow participants. But this is an article that just came out in 2020 in a respected academic journal called Early Christianity. It's written by a guy named Juan Hernandez, Jr., who teaches at Bethel Seminary and And so he wrote this article titled, The Koma Yohaneum, A Relic in the Textual Tradition. And of course, he doesn't believe in the authenticity of the Koma Yohaneum, but I think it's actually a very excellent article. If you're looking for something, it's only about 10 pages long. that gives you a really nice description of sort of the state of the art on the Academy's understanding of the Coma Ionaeum. So he begins off the discussion of the external evidence for the Coma Ionaeum by saying this on page 62 of the article, quote, The Greek manuscript tradition appears unaware of the existence of the Coma Ionaeum for the first 1,300 years of the New Testament's transmission history. Of the approximately 5,800 extant Greek New Testament manuscripts and lectionaries, only 10 preserve the coma." So that sounds, when you read it, that sounds pretty like, wow, there are 5,800 manuscripts and only 10 have the coma? That's pretty overwhelming. Now, this article by Dr. Hernandez is generally very helpful, but that information might mislead the reader. Because the reader may assume that we have 5,800 Greek witnesses to 1 John, or that we have 5,800 witnesses to 1 John 5, 7, and 8. And they might also assume that of those 5,800, many of them are very early. They're from the second century, the third century, the fourth century. Well, if someone heard that, That could be very, very misleading. When we examine the evidence, what we see is that we actually have very few, relatively speaking, Greek manuscripts of 1 John. And we have very few references to 1 John 5, 7, and 8 in comparison to 5,800. And very, very few of those are early. I've said this before on other occasions in doing some teaching, and maybe you've heard me say this. When you look at the New Testament evidence, we don't have complete New Testament Bibles in codices until the fourth, fifth centuries. In the beginning, the first 300 years, as far as I think most people can agree from the evidence, is that the New Testament writings circulated in collections. The Gospels circulated together. Paul's epistles circulated together. Actually, Acts and the so-called Catholic or general epistles circulated together, and then the book of Revelation sort of circulated on its own. And so when you look at those, of those collections, we have quite a bit, relatively speaking, of early evidence from the Gospels, sorry, from the Gospels and from the Pauline epistles. But when you go to Acts, the Catholic epistles, and Revelation, We have fewer witnesses and they're much later, generally speaking. And part of that's because of the reception and the acknowledgement of the canonicity of these books. Now they were always canonical. If it's inspired scripture, it's God's word. It was canonical the moment it was written. But we're talking about the church's ability to recognize universally its canonicity. And for the Catholic epistles, that generally happened later. You can see this in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, when he does, in several places, talks about the New Testament books. He'll say, for example, that people have questions about 2 and 3 John, or questions about 2 Peter. And so he's writing in 325. People are still figuring out the acknowledgment of the candidacy. Again, they've always been canonical. It's a matter of people acknowledging them as being inspired. So for those reasons, we have a lot less evidence from the Catholic epistles, and we have a lot less from, say, 1 John. So if you were to open up then your Nestle Elan 28th edition, and you looked at the back, the very back of it, there is a listing of witnesses. There's a listing of the papyri, there's a listing of unsealed manuscripts, and you know, the oldest manuscripts that we have of the New Testament are generally the papyri. There are 127 papyri that are listed in the back of the Nesolon 28th edition. Okay, how many papyri do you think we have of 1 John? We've got 127 papyri, but how many do we have of 1 John? Would you think that there are 20 witnesses, 10? There are two. We have two papyri of 1 John. The first is P9. It dates from the 3rd century. It's kept at Harvard University. But like a lot of the papyri, it's only fragmentary. It includes only 1 John 4, 11 and 12, and 1 John 4, 14 through 17. It's not a witness for or against the Koma Yohanaim. The second papyri we have, we only have two, is P74. It dates from the 7th century, so it's really not even an early papyri. It's in Cologne, Germany. And guess what? It doesn't have 1 John 5, 7, and 8 either. It's not a witness for it. So it's not a witness for or against the Coma Ionaeum. So here's the thing. We don't have any papyri evidence for or against the Coma Ionaeum. And we have very little early evidence, again, for the Catholic pistils in general. J.K. Eliot has written a little study on the early evidences for the Catholic epistles, and he says we only have eight papyri total. bearing witness to any of the Catholic epistles. We have three for James, Papyrus 20, Papyrus 23, Papyrus 100. We have four for 1 Peter, P72, P81, P125, and 02-06. That's not a papyrus, that would be an uncial. We have one for 2 Peter, P72, one for 1 John, again, that's early. and that's P9, and again, it doesn't have 1 John 5, 7, 8, and we have two for Jude, P72, P78. God in his providence did not allow the preservation of papyri evidence for much of 1 John, four verses in P9. There are none, by the way, no early ones for 2 and 3 John. So my point is, this presents a problem for people who have hitched their wagon to the reconstruction method, who think that we can go and reconstruct the original text. based on the existing extant evidence. It's just not there. It's not there. And that's why people get into very fanciful reconstructions, because there's not enough empirical evidence to come up with that. That's why, of course, we hold to not the reconstruction of the text, but the preservation of the text. And not preservation as there are manuscripts preserved from every century, but the ultimate preservation of the text up to the moment in which the people of God need it. And of course, we believe that The Reformation was a pivotal time, the printing of the New Testament was a pivotal time, and God's Spirit was at work. And guess what? At that time, God saw fit to have 1 John 5, 7, and 8, the Coma Ionaeum, included in the printed editions of the Texas Receptus, and then to be used as a basis for the vernacular translations of the Protestant era, for those of us who speak English, something like the King James Version eventually. And so we believe in the providential preservation of God's Word. Now that's the papyri. We're still on part one, external evidence. Hope this isn't boring. Hang with me. Let's go on and talk then about, okay, what about other types of evidence? What about the so-called uncials or majuscules and the minuscules? What kind of evidence do we have for the coma ioneum from those? Well, I went this morning online to the virtual manuscript room for the INTF in Munster. Anybody can go there online. It's easy to do. And you can punch in any verse in the New Testament and it'll give you, search the database and give you all the information. So, I went in there this morning and I put in 1 John 5, 7, and it yielded 262 results. Not 5,800. See? There are 262 cataloged manuscripts that have some witness to 1 John 5-7. So that gives you a little bit better perspective. There are 10 extant manuscripts that have the Koma Yonaum in 1 John 5-7b-8a, 10, but not 10 out of 5,800, 10 out of 262. And that's a different ball game there, in my opinion. Of those now, furthermore, how many of that 262 are from the fifth century or earlier? How many of them do we have that were written in the first 400 years of the Christian movement? The answer is four. There are four. Codex 01, which is Sinaiticus, 02, which is Alexandrinus, 03, which is Vaticanus, and 048. I'm not sure what its name is. Somebody will probably tell me. We don't have a lot of early evidence with which we can do a hypothetical reconstruction of the early text. Now, okay, only four. I said, okay, what about from the 10th century and earlier? Let's go through 900 years, the first 900 years of the Christian movement. How many manuscripts do we have of 1 John 5, 7? And the answer is nine. We have nine. That means, remember 262, That means 253 of the 262 we have are later than the 10th century. So that puts things in perspective about those 10 witnesses we have that are late. They're actually in line with most of the evidence that we have as far as dating goes. for 1 John 5, 7. By the way, maybe there's some way to search multiple verses. I haven't figured that out yet. But I also searched 1 John 5, 8. It yielded a few more results, 268 results, but no more earlier manuscripts. There are a few extra older ones that it listed, so no other early information. So here's the conclusion that I come away with. from this. First of all, we have no papyri evidence either for or against the Coma Ioaneum. We have very little early evidence altogether. There are only four Greek manuscripts from the 5th century or earlier that bear witness to omission of the Coma Ioaneum. And therefore, we should understand the modern decision to exclude the Coma Ioaneum is not based on papyri finds, but it's based primarily on the 19th century confidence in the unseals Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. It wasn't based on we've done all this great empirical research. It's we were following the readings of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. What do we know about these documents? Do we know anything about their provenance? Do we know anything about the, the theological motivations that drove the persons who were the tridents of these manuscripts. We don't, we know nothing about them. Now, what can we say positively? We don't have a lot of early manuscripts. What do we know about the Coma Ioneum? The earliest citation of the Coma Ioneum comes in the writings of a Spanish bishop, whose name was a Priscillian, or maybe if you, I guess, pronounce classical Latin as Priscillian. And he had a book called the Liber Apologeticus, the Apologetic Book. And this book dates to the year 382. That's the first time we have a reference to the Coma Ionaeum. Now, Priscillian has been accused of modalism, oddly enough, of not being an Orthodox Trinitarian. But even Hernandez, in that 2020 article that I'm gonna bounce back a little bit on, writes the following on page 65 of that article. He says, the coma was nevertheless widely used in Orthodox Trinitarian tractates throughout North Africa and Spain during the 5th and 6th centuries. It also appeared in Latin Bibles dating as early as the fourth century that are extant. And so my point is that despite the fact that the Koma Yohaneum does not appear in early extant Greek papyri or unseals, there is no doubt about its antiquity. It wasn't created in the 15th century. It's early. There's early evidence for it. The question about the Koma Yoneum is not its antiquity, but its authenticity. And sometimes people, I think, in the guild say things that are misleading, that lead people to believe that it wasn't ancient. Clearly, it is. I'm going to skip over a little bit of stuff, or we'll be here forever. So, let's move on. Let's talk about the internal evidence now. So the internal evidence is, okay, we look within 1 John and we say, let's look at the language, the style, the vocabulary. Does the passage make sense? Does it fit? And I want to call attention to at least two arguments that have been made in defense of the authenticity of the Koma Yoneim on internal on the base of internal evidence, okay? The first of these I'm gonna call the linguistic argument, and the second I'm gonna call the nomenclature argument. So first of all, the linguistic argument. This argument was made in support of the authenticity of the Coma Ioneum by Matthew Henry in the 17th century, by Frederick Nolan and Robert Louis Dabney in the 19th century, and by Edward Hills in the 20th century. It's also summarized in a good little pamphlet that the Trinitarian Bible Society puts out that is attributed in authorship to G.W. Anderson and D.E. Anderson, and it's titled, Why 1 John 5, 7, and 8 is in the Bible. The argument is that the Coma Ionaeum fits grammatically in the context of 1 John 5, 7, and 8, and if it were to be removed, it would create problems based on gender agreement. If the Coma Ionaeum were omitted, the passage would read, 1 John 5, 7, for there are three that bear witness. Ahoy, tres, eisen, hoy, martiruntes. And then it would continue to read in 5.8b, the spirit, and the water, and the blood, and the three are one. In Greek, tanuma kai tahudor kai tahima kai hoitres ais tahen aisen. The problem would be that the three neuter singular nouns in verse eight, where the spirit, the water, and the blood, are all neuter nouns, that they would be following after the masculine plural article and participle in the first half of verse seven, hoi martirontes, and followed by the masculine plural article and masculine adjective number three, hoitres, also in verse eight. Does that make sense? If you take the koma yonam out, you've got a masculine participle and three neuter nouns. It wouldn't fit grammatically in Greek. The point is made by R.L. Dabney and cited in the Anderson article. First, if it be made, the masculine article, numeral, and particle are made to agree directly with three neuters, an insuperable and very bold grammatical difficulty. But if the disputed words are allowed to stand, they agree directly with two masculines and one neuter noun, where, according to a well-known rule of syntax, the masculines among the group control the gender over a neuter connected with them. That makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, get the pamphlet and read it, and maybe it'll make more sense to you. So there's a grammatical argument based on gender agreement that argues for the propriety of the inclusion of the coma yoneum. The second argument on internal grounds, I would call the nomenclature argument. And that is that those who believe that the Coma Ionaeum is spurious or a late addition or a late creation, they often say that it was added to prove the Trinity. Well, if that were the case, one would expect that if it were just added, that perhaps they would have used conventional Orthodox Trinitarian language of the father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But in verse 7, the terms are the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit. And the point is, rather than Hwyos, Son, it's Lagos, Word. So if they were trying to read in, you know, later Orthodox Trinitarian language, why would they use Lagos rather than Quios? Hernandez, in the article, we're bouncing off a little bit, on the other hand, in that article, he says that the language in 1 John 5, 7 of the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit is actually an internal evidence argument against the Coma Ionaeum's authenticity. He writes on page 61, quote, a number of the Coma's terms and phrases are alien to the context of 1 John. The designation's Holy Spirit and word as a person, for example, do not occur elsewhere in 1 John, end quote, page 61. His argument, however, seems peculiar to me if we uphold the traditional view of the authorship of 1 John. Who wrote 1 John? The Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James. And Hernandez is saying the language of Holy Spirit and word are not Johannine. Well, what about the prologue to the Gospel of John, which begins, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Logos, as a person. Furthermore, references to God's Spirit abound in the Gospel of John, and three times within the Gospel of John, John specifically uses the term Holy Spirit. or Holy Ghost, John 1.33, John 14.26, John 20.22. As for 1 John, although the Koma Yohaneum is the only place in 1 John where Holy Spirit is used, that term specifically is used, there are multiple references to the Spirit of God in 1 John, including 1 John 3.24, 1 John 4.2, 1 John 4.6, 1 John 4.13, and even in the undisputed part of 1 John 5.8, there's a reference to the Spirit. So there is nothing in the language of the Coma Ionaeum that is inconsistent with Johannine vocabulary and style in general, and with 1 John in particular. So we've covered external evidence. We've talked some about two arguments for internal evidence. And let's move on now and talk a little bit about historical reception of the Coma Ionaeum. Here we can draw on a 2011 dissertation by a fellow named Grantley MacDonald. He's not someone who is in our camp, but we can plunder the Egyptians, brothers. So he notes in his study that the Coma Ionaeum was embraced, commented upon, and used in the theological tradition of Christian Europe prior to the Reformation and the Enlightenment. The scholars of the High Middle Ages who quoted and wrote about the Koma Ioaneum before the Reformation included men like Bernard of Clairvaux who lived from 1090 to 1153, Peter Lombard who lived from 1095 to 1160, Peter Abelard who lived from 1079 to 1142, Bonaventure 1217 to 1274, William of Ockham, Ockham's razor, 1290 to 1349, and the so-called dumb ox and angelic doctor, Thomas Aquinas, 1224 to 1274, who's having something of a renaissance in some reformed circles these days. The acceptance and usage of the Coma Ioaneum continued in the Reformation era. Calvin was well aware that the verse was disputed, for example. In his commentary, he writes of 1 John 5, 7, quote, the whole of this verse has been omitted by some, end quote. Sometimes you run into people like a certain popular internet apologist who will say, oh, cow, they knew nothing. If they had the NA28, they would embrace exactly the text. Listen, all it takes is reading their commentaries. They were aware of almost all the issues that we know today. Calvin knew about the Communioneum being a disputed passage. Then, if you look at his commentary, he anticipates the linguistic argument that will later be taken up by Matthew Henry, and Frederick Nolan, and R.L. Dabney, and Dr. Hills, and Andersons, when he says, the passage flows better when this clause is added. Then he concludes, As I see that it is found in the best and most approved copies, I am inclined to receive it as the true reading. And we all know that, probably know in this group especially, that Erasmus, in his first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516, omitted inclusion of the Coma Ionaeum. He omitted it in the second edition of 1519, But, in part, due to the outcry of his readers, he included the Coma Ioaneum in his third edition of 1522, and then that was taken up by Protestant scholars like Stephanus and Beza and the Elseviers, and it became part of the text that is received by all. Therefore, it entered into the translations of the Protestant era, including Tyndale's First English New Testament translated from the Greek in 1525 and in 1534. This acceptance continued among the Protestant Orthodox. 1 John 5-7 is listed as a proof text in chapter 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith in its articulation of the doctrine of God. This in turn continued in the Savoy Declaration of the Congregationalists in 1568 and the Baptist in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. I've often said and wondered for my fellow Reformed brothers, if you don't receive the traditional text, are you going to take a conscientious exception on the proof texts that were received by the Protestant Orthodox who formed our confession. Puyon made a great point last week. It settled in on me as I thought about it. I don't know if he was saying, remember, Jeff, it's not just the confession that articulates this. It's that these godly men who framed the confession were godly Christians who knew the Bible. And I think Puyani could tell us in the conversation, I think he was also saying they were Catholic with a small C and that they understood the Orthodox Christian tradition. And they knew the doctrine of God. And they saw no problem with using 1 John 5, 7 as a proper proof text for establishing the doctrine of God. For those of us who are Reformed Baptists, we might be interested to know that the particular Baptist pastor, Benjamin Keech, in an extended sermon titled, The Blessedness of Christ's Sheep, from John 10, 27, and 28, describes how Christ's sheep are committed to his word and to right doctrine, including, he says, the blessed doctrine of the Trinity. And what passage does he quote to cinch his point? 1 John 5, 7. In his commentary on 1 John 5, 7, and 8, the Puritan exegete Matthew Poole, who's my favorite expositor, he's my go-to man to read any time I'm preaching through the New Testament and have a question about some passage I don't understand, I'll pick up Matthew Poole. He almost always answers the question for me. He lived from 1624 to 1679. Here's his commentary on 1 John 5, 7, and 8. He says, in these two verses, one is given the whole testimony of the truth of Christianity, which he reduces to to two tercenaries of witnesses, two sets of three witnesses, the three witnesses in verse seven and the three in verse eight. He is especially, Poole is especially keen to show how this passage fits hand in glove with the surrounding context. He's almost making an internal evidence argument. for the coma. He says, quote, the matter of their testimony is the same with that of their faith who are born of God, that Jesus is the Son of God and Messiah, as may be collected from what was said before, in verses one and five, and what was said afterward, in verse nine. In other words, he's saying, he's making an internal argument for the propriety of 1 John 5, seven and eight. to jettison, to do away with the Koma Yohaneum would be to abandon and to stop up a well that has been dug by those who have gone before us. It would be to refuse to drink from this well of this truth. Fourth point, we've talked about external evidence, internal evidence. historical reception. The fourth is theological and apologetic evidence. For my resource here, I would recommend Grantley MacDonald's other book, which came out of his dissertation, and it's titled Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe. And it's subtitled, Erasmus, the Johannine Coma, and the Trinitarian Debate. Again, he's not, doesn't hold our view, but we can plunder the Egyptians. And I have a book review of this that's coming out in the July issue of the Puritan Reform Journal. He notes that beginning in the 19th century, the coma joineum became a flashpoint for controversy, dividing traditionalists on one side and liberals and unitarians and freethinkers on the other. McDonald suggests that the coma, whose authenticity has been soundly rejected by modern textual criticism, has remained nevertheless what he calls an unquiet corpse. It's supposed to be dead, but somehow it keeps living and breathing. And he says its transmission history serves as what he calls, quote, a keyhole that allows us to peer straight into the heart of the violent struggles over the understanding of the Trinity that took place from the 16th to the 19th centuries. He notes how that beginning with the Enlightenment, the authenticity of the coma was alternately attacked by anti-Trinitarian and rationalistic thinkers, consisting of luminaries no less the likes than John Milton, Isaac Newton, and Edward Gibbon, and then defended by Orthodox and traditionalist luminaries, consisting of men of equal standing, including John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, and John Wesley, among others. One of the most interesting suggestions that MacDonald makes in the book is a divide that he makes on worldview, and he uses the language of Foucault. And he says, if you have what he calls a pre-critical episteme, a pre-critical worldview, your tendency is to embrace the coma Ioneum as part of scripture. But if you have a modern episteme, your tendency is to reject it. According to McDonald then, the reception of the coma represents a proverbial fork in the road. As he puts it, and again, he's not on our side, but notice what he says, quote, one path was followed by those who insisted on the providential preservation of scripture. That is those who embraced the coma. The other was taken by those who believe that scripture, whatever its source, is subject to the same process of transmission as any other text. The story that results according to McDonald is one of, quote, constantly competing claims in which outcomes are rarely clear and motives are often obscure. MacDonald, again, is hardly sympathetic to those who continue to uphold the coma against the modern scholarly consensus, held since the mid-20th century, that the Three Heavenly Witness passage is a spurious and late interpolation. He associates renewed debate over the coma to what he calls the revival of the Christian right. conspiracy theories, and internet discussions. Oh my goodness, we're having an internet discussion today. We must be part of it. As a result, it becomes a hot button issue. McDonald's suggests, quote, as a result of an informational cascade amongst non-scholarly believers, the divide between academic consensus and lay conviction is growing. Hernandez, in the 2020 article, makes some of the same points. He calls the Coma Ioaneum, quote, an artifact of an ongoing debate, end quote, adding, quote, despite the near unanimity of modern critical scholarship regarding its spurious origins, discussions over the coma have failed to abate, and every generation appears to produce a trove of advocates and defenders. We're this generation's advocates and defenders of the coma. In reading MacDonald and Hernandez, I am reminded of how atheists often describe their frustration about the fact that no matter how secularized and sophisticated Western society becomes, a vast majority still say they believe in God. Or when I hear evolutionary scientists become frustrated with lay people who continue to believe in special creation, despite everything they've proven to us about evolution. Why can't these people get it? Hernandez reflects this frustration. The data is clear, he writes, page 68. Then he refers to the intransigence. of the Coma Ioannaeum's persistence, and he says this reflects what he calls the vitality of a particular readership, since they believe, quote, a cardinal Christian doctrine is at stake. For him, this really doesn't matter. He declares on page 61, authenticity is beside the point. But is the authenticity of the Coma Ioneum beside the point? Could the tenacity of this much-maligned part of God's Word among Christians, could its tenacity, despite its paltry empirical support, actually be the result of the fact that it is authentic, that it is theionustas, that it is God-breathed? that it is autopistos, self-authenticating, that it has been preserved by God? Is it that the sheep hear the voice of their shepherd in it? According to Hernandez, the textual evidence against the Coma Ioaneum is unequivocal, but modern text critics can't seem to stop writing about and defending this assured result of their scholarship. Grantley MacDonald has produced two scholarly monographs in the last decade on it. The Tyndale House Greek New Testament, which takes the coma out, as one might expect, provides its most extensive textual discussion in its notes to explaining why they omitted the coma Ioneum. Elijah Hickson writes blog posts on evangelical textual criticism and patrols the outer reaches of the internet to beat back those breaking the Coma Ioaneum affirming quarantine. Juan Hernandez devotes a scholarly article marveling at the intransigence of the debate about this relic in the textual tradition. Why? Why does it keep persisting? Why do they have to work so hard to try to stop it? Friends, this is where we're in a great position because if it's God's word, man will not be able to suppress it and it will be preserved. If we're wrong about it, we'll be proven wrong. It won't persist. But if we're right about it, nothing can stop it persisting. We were talking about this a couple of weeks ago before we started this series, and we were talking about the subjects, and we've got to start talking about this passage a little bit. And maybe Christian and Puyon might want to share, when we get into the discussion, some of the things that they said. I think it's worth repeating. But they were talking about how CJ deniers sometimes seem like the new atheists, who almost prove the existence of God by their zeal to deny him. And I feel sort of like that about that with the coma, that sometimes perhaps the authenticity of it is proven by the zeal of those who try to deny it. Or as one put it, the coma Ioneum is like a beach ball, that no matter how hard the modern critics try to push it under the surface, the darn thing keeps popping up again. Well, we've looked at the external evidence, the internal evidence, historical reception, And we've talked a little bit about the theological and apologetic angles. And with that, I'll bring my presentation to a close. Thank you so much for listening. All righty. Thank you very much, Jeff. I'm going to go ahead and unmute Christian. And there he is. And we did have a few questions that came in. Let me go ahead and bring up at least one of them. Here we go. What would you say to those who claim that accepting the comma proves that you have no consistent text critical methodology? I believe we covered that a little bit, but if you want to go into that a little more, that seems to be a common theme that goes around. And the rest of you guys can join in as well. Do you want me to respond to that, Chris? Yes. I think what I find sometimes from people who have embraced the reason to collecticism is they say, well, why can't you use our method to produce your text? No matter how many times we say, but we think your method doesn't work. We don't think that we don't think God has seen fit to to leave enough extant evidence that one could use human reasoning to reconstruct the text. And we believe instead that God has preserved it at various historical points along the way in time. And the Bible we have now that has been used is the preserved word. And so I would say, and other brothers can chime in, I don't want to be forced to use your method. I don't agree with your method. I don't think your method is intellectually satisfying, and I don't think it's spiritually satisfying. I want a different method. I want the method that the framers of our confession used. Somebody else want to chime in on that one? Otherwise, next question. I'll weigh in on methodology because I think those who object on those grounds should really know better as apologetic defenders of the faith. They have to understand that every methodology enjoys consistency within its own framework. It doesn't matter if it's mine or yours. That's the nature of a methodology. It's built upon presuppositions. And that methodology usually has built-in defenses for the presuppositions that we hold most dear, or as we call them in the Vantillian camp, presuppositions that enjoy revisional immunity. We build defenses into our epistemology and into our worldview in order to keep them from being changed. We have a different methodology, as Brother Riddle said, and so did our fathers in the faith in the 16th and 17th century. One thing that we need to reject out of hand is that they did not understand text criticism and that they did not engage in the science of text criticism. They did, but they did it in a pre-modern paradigm, which granted, I know it's like unthinkable, but supernatural elements to inform their epistemology. They started from a different vantage. They believe God preserved his word, and they recognize that their duty as scholars and even critics was not to reconstruct that word, but to recognize it and to receive it. Now as a Presbyterian, I love the Westminster Confession of Faith and I've been studying chapter one as it relates to textual criticism for years now. And I think you can actually glean some of their text critical canons from chapter one and see how they approach the question of spurious readings. You know, how do you determine the authenticity or how do you acknowledge rather the authenticity of a particular verse? You can read chapter one, paragraph five, and see that they considered the testimony of the church, the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of the parts, the scope of the whole, the full discovery it makes regarding salvation. Those are the kind of canons which allowed scripture to evidence itself as the word of God. And when you test the comma against those canons, it has to be acknowledged that it passes with flying colors. And, you know, even though modernists will immediately reject another canon that's mentioned there in the confession, let me read it anyways, notwithstanding, That is in spite of all the objective canons that I just mentioned, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of scripture is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. Many will mock that as being too subjective to be considered a text critical canon, but it's actually not because the Holy Spirit is a person. He is God. He was sent to bear witness, even as we read in 1 John 5, the spirit is the one that beareth witness because the spirit is truth. Methodology is crucial. Methodology, well, sometimes I wonder, do modern text critics even pray for the spirit's help before they engage in evaluation of a particular reading? They should, and they must, because it's only the Spirit that can open our ears to hear the shepherd's voice. So when it comes down to methodology, I will be the first to admit, our methodology is different, because it's an extension of our theology. Pre-modern, pre-critical theology. And being different does not make it inconsistent, and it certainly doesn't make it unmeaningful. That's all I would add. my comment would be simply who would I want to side with would I want to side with those who deny the nature of a scripture such as Ehrman and Metzger Metzger had a view that he hoped that we would be in a position at a future stage at a future date that we would be able to restore the text. to its original and that's why he entitled or subtitled his his book that is the classic book that the textual critics use and is taught in seminaries when the subject of textual criticism is brought up the text of the new testament but very few underline its subtitle which is its transmission and then he believed in corruption it's corruption and then it's restoration but now Metzger is old-fashioned and now people like D.C. Parker and Ehrman, Bart Ehrman himself, they say that you cannot no longer restore the text. We cannot have the restored Bible. Now who do I want to fall in with? Would I want to follow these unconverted, unbelieving textual critics who deny the fundamentals of the faith or those who have throughout the ages trusted. Would I want to follow those missionaries such as Henry Martin which I have one of his early editions of the Persian Bible that he used to defend the Christian faith from this text that he has it in this, his 1837, or 18, that's right, the 1837 edition of Martins, where he had defended the doctrine of the Trinity against the Iranian mullahs of his day in his extended diaries and memoirs. It is sadly no longer in publication, but he defends the doctrine of the Trinity by using his New Testament, and what he had, the New Testament that he had was the one that had the text in it. He would be in a weaker position today if he followed the textual criticism method of our day. He would not be able to make the same use. The same goes with those other missionaries, such as William Carey, His Bibles that he translated into Tamil and Punjabi and so on, he was facing those who reject this doctrine and he translated the word of God and the Lord blessed his truth. The Lord will not bless error. The Lord does not bless something that is spurious, but he blesses his truth, he blesses his word. And so who do I want to follow? The textual criticism method of our day, or those who had a presuppositional view that God has preserved his word. Would I want to follow D.C. Parker, who believes in the modern textual criticism methodology, who says, well, we cannot have the word of God. Or would I want to follow those who still to this day, as Joel Beakey in his commentary on 1 John, he does defend it. It doesn't go into great detail, but he continues to defend, and he says, we have ample ground to believe that there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. That's all I have to say about that. All right. One last question, because we're at 4.15. How would you defend the doctrine of the Trinity, as David Martin put it in his book on the Gemini, First John 5-7, that there are only three persons in the Godhead, and no more than three persons in the Godhead, without First John 5-7? In other words, how do you know to limit the Godhead to only three persons without that verse? I'll put that to all three of you. I mean, I'll take a stab at it first. I mean, I think there's a sense in which it would be true to say that you don't have to have this verse to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, because there are other verses that support it. And if you were asking what other passage would you use, this might not be as obvious as 1 John 5, 7, but you could turn to the Great Commission in Matthew 28, 19 and 20, you could turn to the Trinitarian blessing in 2 Corinthians 13, 14, and the great multiple Trinitarian triads that Robert Lethem points out so well in his book on the Trinity. So I could defend the doctrine of the Trinity. My defense of the Trinity isn't dependent solely on 1 John 5, 7, and 8, but I think we talked about this a little bit last week. If it's part of God's Word, then it ought to be preserved. As Christ said in Matthew 5.18, every jot and tittle has to be preserved. And actually, I'm getting away from your point, Chris. I know you want to talk about Trinitarian theology, but I was thinking more about this because, again, the Hernandez article, he put a lot of stress on the fact that The reason that there continues to be controversy over this first generation by generation is because it relates to the Trinity. So on the last page of his article on page 68, he says, Trinitarian concerns inflame the issue. A cardinal Christian doctrine is at stake. And I think he's right to a certain degree, but I don't think that's the total reason as to why There continues to be controversy over those who want to suppress this verse or remove it. It's more the doctrine of Scripture is at stake. The doctrine of the Trinity is at stake, but the doctrine of Scripture is at stake in the preservation of this passage. And it's valuable for what it tells us about the doctrine of God. I noted it's used as a pretext in our confession. in chapter two, but also what is at stake with respect to its authenticity as a doctrine of Scripture, if that makes sense. Well, if I could follow up on that, it also ties back to what we discussed last week with monogamy, suios versus staios. And we considered the Gnostic possibility that there could be a panoply of persons that are divine in terms of begotten gods. And many have pointed to 1 John 5, 7 as a weakening of the doctrine of the Trinity because of the use of the word word rather than son. But if we keep in mind early tendencies toward Gnosticism and perhaps speculate that John's purpose in writing was to warn about Gnostic tendencies in the church, I think his use of the word logos is actually strengthening a case for a unique triune God And if you think about first john chapter two, you know, he hints at some of the heresies that were prevalent in his day And it was all about christological and trinitarian orthodoxy who is a liar But he that denieth that jesus is the christ. He is antichrist that denieth the father and the son So I think the use of the word word rather than son actually strengthens an anti-gnostic apologetic in identifying the word with the son disallowing the proto-gnostics to drive that theological wedge between the two as Presumably they sought to do so, you know corrupting John's prologue so In terms of the comma, it's historically, I know people nowadays don't like proof texting, you know, people mock that, but Westminster Confession of Faith, London Baptist Confession listed the comma as the first proof for the doctrine of the Trinity, acknowledging that it is the best proof of all. And also when it comes to anti-Christian cults, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, I, found this week, 1882 July issue of Zion's Watchtower. And these cultists acknowledged that the doctrine of the Trinity, the only text in scripture which was ever claimed to prove or affirm that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one, is a portion of 1 John 5, 7-8. And of course, then they parrot the revisionists of their day talking about its lack of evidence and its lack of authenticity. But 1 John 5, 7 to 8 is the best proof in the New Testament of the doctrine of the Trinity. And that might be one of the reasons why it's so fiercely opposed. Or contrary-wise, why its tenacity is seen in every generation. Just a quick follow-up, Christian. I really appreciated that because I hadn't made that connection before. I don't know if we talked about this last week or not, with respect to John 118. Dr. Hills, in King James Version Defended, in the section on John 118, talks about the Valentinian influence. And he said that they were trying to, they preferred Thaos at John 118 because they didn't want the, the Huyas, the Son, connected with the Lagas in John 1.14 or John 1.1. And I hadn't thought about that, the ramifications of the fact that in 1 John 5.7, it is the Lagas. And there is an unstated affirmation there that the Son is the Lagas. The Lagas isn't a separate entity. It might have been held by non-Orthodox who would have said, well, there's a Logos and then there's Jesus the Son or something like that. So that's a nice point. I had not thought of that before. Yes. Well, regarding the doctrine of the Trinity and this text, I find that the Muslim apologetic, apologetics and muslims who are seeking to undermine the christian faith and you only have to do a simple search online and you will see how they are doing two things one in using the quotations taken by various apology um online men who are seeking to in their mind they think they are evangelizing many and yet their words are being used against Christianity by the Muslim apologetics and our apologists that and and so I find that quite interesting I find that how the coming from Iran the Iranian government in its center the city of Qom uh which is the place where they train the islamic clerics they are publishing books translating the works of various men and christian so-called evangelicals and using their works against christianity to show two things one that the word of god that the new evangelicals do not believe that they have a text And then followed from that, that the texts that are spurious are the texts oftentimes used in defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, and they claim that, well, these evangelicals actually don't believe these texts. And one of the texts that is the hard text is 1 John 5, 7. And I find it mind-boggling that that Christian apologetics and Reformed apologetics, why do they go after such texts? Why do they seek to undermine these texts? And I find it to be, as Jeff mentioned, that their attitude is like the atheists, who do not believe the existence of God, And yet they have something within them, an innate feeling that they must go after and prove to everyone that this God does not exist. And so it would be like me trying to prove for whatever strange reason that there is nobody living next door to us. And so that everyone who passes by, I say to them, remember, no one is living next door. Please be aware of this. And I find the same kind of mentality that in every book that you read on textual criticism, 1 John 5-7 should come up, and various stories about Erasmus that no one can prove, they just read it and regurgitate it again, and you read the same kind of thing that can be quite tiresome, and the same matters are then used by Islamic apologists to undermine the Christian faith, and these Christian friends think that they are doing great service to the Church of Christ and yet not realize they are giving ammunition into the hands of these Muslims. So we should continue keeping to this text and men of past, I was reading the works of Benjamin Bedone, who wrote the Exposition of the Baptist Catechism, and this is one of the critical texts that he uses in Exposition of the Baptist Catechism to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. So that's all I will say about that. I'm really glad you used that illustration. That's the one I was thinking of. I'm going to use that one. I'm going to steal that one from you when I preach sometime. It's a great I'm gonna prove to everybody that my neighbor doesn't live there. It's almost an obsession in trying to prove some point. And it does seem that there is almost an irrational attempt to try to show us, this isn't really the word of God. Really, really, really, it's not, it's not, it's not. And we're sort of bleeding into your presentation. I'm very much looking forward to it next week. But I was just thinking along those lines when you said that, one of the saddest things I can recall seeing in recent years is a well-known Christian apologist, a video of his ministry, and some fellow ran to the microphone and read from a modern translation the footnotes about why the Koma Yohaneum was not an original part of 1 John. And the fellow ran to the microphone and just read. He wasn't interested in getting the answer back. He was just seizing the platform to say, see, their scriptures are a mess. See, their scriptures didn't really say that the Lord Jesus Christ is the word of God, is the son of God. And Somehow, again, that point seems to be missed by those who are promoting the modern critical text today. How it's being, like you said, so I'm looking, I'm anticipating, I'm sure everybody else is, your presentation next week, Puyon. Thank you. I think a challenge that we could issue to anyone who rejects 1 John 5, 7, and 8 is ask them to provide us either an explicit verse, or implicitly through argumentation from scripture, prove that the Godhead is limited to three persons? We know there are three persons from the verses you mentioned, but how do we limit it with scripture without first assuming it? And I think that was what that question was getting at, and what David Martin pointed out in his book in section 2.4 is, without that verse, for all we know, there could be unknown members of the Godhead, unknown to us. not unknown to the Godhead, but they're not revealed to us in Scripture, they could be revealed to us in Heaven. And that's an argument I don't think any of the critics of 1 John 5-7 have ever bothered to deal with. How do they defend limiting the Godhead to only three without that verse? Because I know of no other verses in Scripture that do that. Poyun, you had a question from a translator. He was asking what the Roundtables opinion was on Jimenez's marginal note regarding 1 John 5, 7, and 8 and the polyglot, the Complotensian polyglot. Do you have what that quote is? I don't, personally. It was just a question that was sent to me by text. You know what that means. Jeff, you're going to have to do a Word magazine edition on that. But I think right about now is a good time as people are leaving. We can go ahead and close out. Jeff, if you would go ahead and lead us in a closing prayer. Okay. Let's join together in prayer if we can. Gracious and loving God, we give you thanks for this day that you have given to us to enjoy you and to enjoy fellowship one with another. We thank you for this discussion. We commend it to you. Oh God, we confess today our faults that we have sinned against thee and thoughtward indeed of what we have done and what we've left undone. We ask that you would forgive our failures to love thee as we ought and to love our neighbor as we ought, that you would help us to grow in the faith and that we would be drawn closer to thee. And we do ask that you would be with us, that you would profit what we have heard to the hearers and to those listening now and those who will listen later. And we do ask your blessing upon the meeting that will take place next Tuesday as well. And, oh God, we do now ask that you watch over us, bless us, and keep us. You are the thrice holy God. You are holy, holy, holy Father, Word, and Holy Ghost. And we do praise Thee, and we do express our admiration and our joy in Thee, and ask for You to bless us and keep us through Christ. We ask this in His name. Amen. Amen. Amen. All right, go ahead and end here and just like let everyone know that next week, we will be covering how a lot of this relates to apologetics with Muslims. And I'm really looking forward to that one as well. And a couple of notes. Those of you who listen next week, be prepared. Take really good notes. Make sure you go back and listen to Christians and Jews, because there's gonna be a competition at the end of these. And the prize is a TBS Westminster Reference Bible, the Metrical Psalms, leather belt. So pay attention, just let everyone else know. The Confessional Bibliology Forums have gone live. It's a subdomain. You can find the link at the main site as I'm rebuilding it, as I accidentally copied this stuff over, figured out that's what I did. But it'll be forums.confessionalbibliology.com. And I think we can go ahead and end it there. Everyone just have a good week. All right. Thanks, Chris. Blessings, guys. Hey, so are the roundtable hosts disqualified from the contest or what? I'll put up two. Just in case one of the roundtable hosts actually gets one. I'll put up two. How about that? Excellent. See you next week, brothers. Blessings, guys. Bye-bye.