1 John 5:7 similarly states: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” In 3 Nephi, the Holy Ghost is a witness of the Father and the Son, rather than forming part of a triune witness. However, 1 John 5:7 is considered a late addition to the scriptures. As Massey H. Shepherd Jr., Hodges Professor of Liturgics, The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, explains:
During the controversies of the 4th century over the doctrine of the Trinity the text was expanded—first in Spain ca. 380, and then taken up in the Vulgate—by the insertion: “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one.” A few late Greek manuscripts contain the addition. Hence it passed into the KJV. But all modern critical editions and translations of the New Testament, including the Revised Standard Version, omit the interpolation, as it has no warrant in the best and most ancient manuscripts or in the early church fathers.