Johannine Comma and Frederick von Nolan

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"'instead of "the Father, Word, and Spirit,' the remaining passage would have been direct concessions to the Gnostics and Sabellians, who, in denying the personal difference of the Father and the Son, were equally obnoxious to those avowed adversaries, the Catholics and the Arians. Nor did the orthodox require these verses for the support of their cause; they had other passages which would accomplish all that they could effect; and without their aid, they maintained and established their tenents."³

Nolan gives two reasons why 1 John 5:7 is seemingly scanty in reference to quotations from the church fathers: One - The passage in I John 5:7 is among those like 1 Timothy 3:16 and Acts 20:28 that have all been tampered with in the manuscript tradition, all three having to do with the deity of Christ as "God." Two - That the major reason for not quoting 1 John 5:7 was based on its wording, chiefly, purporting Jesus Christ as the "Word" instead of the "Son." Hence, with the Sabellian heresy being debated that Jesus Christ is the Father with no distinction, 1 John 5:7 would further propagate that notion. Therefore it wasn't quoted.

Dr. Nolan wrote of Eusebius:

“If we now compare the authority thus committed to Eusebius, which seems to have vested him at least with a discretionary power of selecting chiefly those sacred scriptures which he knew to be useful and necessary to the doctrine of the church, with the state of the sacred text as it is now marked in the corrected edition lately put forth by M. Griesbach; we shall perhaps discover how far it is probable he acted to the full extent of his powers, and removed those parts of scripture from the circulated edition, which he judged to be neither conducive to use for doctrine and which are now marked as probable interpolations in the Received Text. They amount principally to the following: the account of the woman taken in adultery, John 8:53–9:11, and three texts which assert in the strongest manner the mystery of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and Redemption, 1 John v. 7-8, 1 Timothy iii. 16, and Acts xx. 28.”

“If two points can be established against Eusebius, that he lacked neither the power, nor the will, to suppress these passages, particularly the latter; there will be fewer objections lying against the charge with which I am adventurous enough to accuse him; in asserting that the probabilities are decidedly in favor of his having expunged,rather than the Catholics having inserted, those passages in the sacred text.” (Dr. Nolan, p. 6)

On the next page of his 116 page summary book, Dr. Nolan continued to comment on the Gnostic Eusebius and the Arians who employed him: "“There will be less reason to dispute his [referring to Eusebius] power over the copies of the original Greek, when we know that his high reputation for learning, aided by the powerful authority of the emperor, tended to recommend his edition to the exclusion of every other; and when it is remembered that the number of the copies of scripture was in this reign above all others considerably reduced on account of the destruction made of them in the preceding. Let us add to these considerations, these further circumstances, that the pious emperor who had employed him to revise the text had been at considerable pains and expense to multiply copies of the scripture, and that the edition thus dispersed, as altered by Eusebius, was peculiarly accommodated to the opinions of the Arians, who from the reign of Constantine that of Theodosius held an unlimited sway over the church; and there will arise something more than presumptive proof in favor of the opinion which I have advanced; that at this period an alteration was made in the sacred text, of which it still retains a melancholy evidence, particularly in the translations made from the edition of Eusebius.” (Dr. Nolan, p. 7)

Johannine Comma and Frederick von Nolan

From Textus Receptus

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