"The Bible's teaching about Christ", by Viktor Rydberg (1862) (Part 9)
A teaching can be biblical either so that she immediately in clear terms is pronounced by the Bible, or so that she becomes the only possible result, when the statements of the Holy Scriptures about any particular subject is compiled and compared. A doctrine which in the latter sense is biblical is not suitable as a prerequisite or point of view for the biblical scholar, because she should only appear as a result of his research. Only a teaching, biblical in the previous sense, is suitable as a starting point, but this only after you have been convinced yourself, that she is explicitly taught by the Bible. Is the doctrine of the Trinity such a teaching?
This question has been answered positively, invoking 1. Jn. 5:7.
But scientifically trained and truthful theologians answer the same question negatively. We would like to quote a statement by one of the most learned and pious Lutheran church teachers in recent times, a man whose name is with reverence mentioned by all opinion parties. We mean Doctor Neander (see the Wikipedia-article about him, here. Translators comment. And see my note [2]). The statement, which is found in his »Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche», I, p. 984—985, is useful to state here, because it both gives a general answer to the abovementioned question and in particular points out the nature of the place referred to in 1. Jn. 5:7.
"The doctrine of the Trinity," says Doctor Neander, "doesn't belong to the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, that is clear already from the fact that she is not in a single place expressly taught in the New Testament; for the only place, where this takes place, namely the verse about the three who bear witness (1 Jn. 5: 7), is decidedly inauthentic.»
Many of the readers of this dissertation seem to question with surprise: what does it mean that a Bible verse is inauthentic? That chapter from the history of the biblical text, which we here below are opening, will provide sufficient information on this. Before we go further, we want, to their service who need an authority other than Neander's in support of their conviction, state what Luther thought about that Bible passage, which one too long invoked as immediate evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity. He was so convinced that the same is of disputed authenticity, that he not only excluded it from his Bible translation[1] but also pronounced his curse upon whomsoever it may be, who after his death would dare again to sneak it into the Holy Scriptures.
The place has, in its true and original condition, the following wording:
»For there are three that bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are one.”
This is the brief content of 1. Jn. 5: 7-8 in the uncorrupted Greek text and in Luther's translation.
In its counterfeit condition, such as it appears in the Latin Bible of the Catholics as well as in the Swedish church Bible etc., it has instead the following wording:
»For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the father, the word and the holy spirit, and the three are one. And there are three that bear witness on the earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one.”
[1] It is not found in any of the German Bible editions, which were published in Wittenberg from 1522 to 1545.
[2] Translator's note: Neander, who is called "The Father of Church History" by church historian Philip Schaff, had pietist leanings, was a very pious and warm-hearted Christian, and had both universalist and "unitarian" or "anti-trinitarian" leanings, the first of them which he perhaps learned from his greatest teacher, Schleiermacher (I'm not sure of Scheiermacher's stance on the subject of the Trinity, though, it's somewhat obscure). This article has this to say about it:
"Neander, Johann August Wilhelm (1789-1850), German colleague of Schleiermacher and professor of church history at the University of Berlin, known as the ‘Prince of the Church Historians’:
‘The doctrine of such a universal restitution would not stand in contradiction to the doctrine of eternal punishment, as it appears in the Gospels; for although those who are hardened in wickedness are to expect endless unhappiness, yet a secret decree of the Divine compassion is not necessarily excluded, by virtue of which, through the wisdom of God revealing itself in the discipline of free agents they will be led to a free appropriation of redemption’ (*History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles *, vol. ii, pp.211-12, translated by J.E. Ryland, 1842)."
