Chiastic literary structure of the Johannine Comma
From Conservapedia
The chiastic literary structure of the Johannine Comma is a commonly overlooked one — Comma Johanneum continued from the preceding v. 5:6 in the First Epistle of John forms a lexically naked pericopal chiasm reflecting the shape of the seven-branched Hebrew menorah:
- A: "This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood." (6a)
- B: "And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." (6b)
- C: "For there are three that bear record in heaven," (7a)
- D: "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:" (7b)
- C': "and these three are one." (7c)
- B': "And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit," (8a)
- A': "and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." (8b)
Com. Isa. 6:3b:
| Isaiah 6:3b | Johannine Comma | Notes/commentary |
|---|---|---|
| "Holy, Holy, Holy," | "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:" (chiastic branches C–D) | The seraphim in Isaiah 6 (as also in the Book of Revelation[1]) says "Holy" three times, hinting God's tripartite nature as three essences.[2] The Johannine Comma is complimentary in expounding upon this a la progressive revelation by explicitly stating the names of the three essences of the Godhead. |
| "is the LORD of Hosts:" | "and these three are one." (chiastic branch C') | Again, the Isaiah and Johannine phrases are complimentary — the Isaiah passage defines God implicitly as one person whose name is the LORD of Hosts, and the Johannine phrasing explicitly highlights God's nature as three-in-one: three essences comprising one[3] person. |
| "the whole earth is full of His glory." | "And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." (chiastic branches B'–A') | Not only are the meanings yet again complimentary in the context of progressive revelation, but the earthly witness is intentionally by divine structuring mentioned after the heavenly witness. This reflects the unchangeably eternal and rigidly supreme ordinances in heaven as the independent factor defining and ruling over its earthly counterpart.[4] To remove the Heavenly Witnesses as modern translations do is tantamount to denying divine authority firmly defining the earthly witness of Jesus Christ's sacrificial atonement for human sin, thereby paving the way for human-orchestrated corruptions based upon stylistic trappings of liberal relativism instead of a consistently conservative theological respect for biblical parallelism's self-defining internal clarifications. |
The Apostolic Father Theophilus of Antioch in To Autolycus summarized the triune nature of Yahweh as: "God, and His Word, and His Wisdom."[5]
