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The Comma Johanneum is a comma, or short clause, present in most translations of the First Epistle of John published from 1522 until the latter part of the nineteenth century, owing to the widespread use of the third edition of the Textus Receptus (TR) as the sole source for translation. In readings containing the clause, such as this one from the King James Bible, 1 John 5:7–8 reads as follows, the Comma itself here rendered with emphasis:
The resulting passage is an explicit reference to the Trinity (the doctrine that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God), and for this reason some Christians are resistant to the elimination of the Comma from modern Biblical translations. Nonetheless, nearly all recent translations have removed this clause, as it does not appear in older copies of the Epistle and it is not present in the passage as quoted by any of the early Church Fathers, who would have had plenty of reason to quote it in their Trinitarian debates (for example, with the Arians), had it existed then. Most Churches now agree that the theology contained in the Comma is true, but that the Comma is not an original part of the Epistle of John.