The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. (Isa 40:8 NIV)
This verse, alongside related texts (e.g., 1 Pet 1:25) is used against the Latter-day Saint view of the Bible and its transmission. This verse, the argument goes, states that the Bible teaches that the biblical text will never have any textual corruptions. It is often raised against the eighth Article of Faith which states that Latter-day Saints “believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.”
There are numerous problems with such an (eisegesis-driven) approach to this text, including the following:
Firstly, no one, except the most ill-informed Fundamentalist, will ever claim that there have been no textual changes and corruptions to the biblical text. The manuscript evidence of overwhelming, and it is not limited to scholarship that is deemed "liberal" (a scare word many Evangelicals use to dismiss much of the scholarship that refutes their faulty presuppositions). For instance, see the works of Philip Comfort, such as his New Testament Text and Translation: A Commentary or Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration. A representative example dealing with the Old Testament would be Emmanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.
Secondly, one is guilty of a common error made by many Protestant apologists, that is, that the term "word of God" is one-to-one equivalent to "the Bible." Instead, the phrase refers to Christ, the Law (Torah), God’s creative utterances, and apostolic and prophetic preaching in the Bible. Consider the following--
Luke 3:2-3: “Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.”
Luke 4:44; 5:1: “And he preached in the synagogues of Galilee. And it came to pass that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Genesaret.”
Luke 8:11-15: “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hears, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation, fall away. And they which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which are in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”
John 1:1, 14: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Acts 4:31: “And when they had parted, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.”
1 Thess 2:13: “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”
Heb 11:3: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do not appear.”
When one reads the verse in context, Isaiah is not speaking of a 100% pristine textual transmission of Scripture but is speaking of the faithfulness of God to His promises and commandments. Indeed, the Hebrew term translated as "endures" by the NIV is the Hebrew verb קום which means to arise/stand/stand up--it does not have the meaning of textual transmission, let alone 100% perfect textual transmission of Scripture itself. The NET, an Evangelical production, offers the following comment on this verse:
In this context the divine "word" specifically refers to his decreed promise assuring Jerusalem that her suffering is over and his glorious return imminent (vv. Isa 40:1-5).
Reformed
Presbyterian W. Gary Crampton wrote the following which is rather a propos:
[T]here is a difference between the Word of
God, which is eternal (Psalm 119:89, 152, 160), and the Bible, which is not.
The Bible is the Word of God written. If one were to destroy one paper Bible,
or all paper Bibles, he would not have destroyed the eternal Word of God. One
such example is given in Jeremiah 36. The prophet was told by God to write His
words in a book, and to read it to the people. Wicked king Jehoiakim, not
comfortable with what had been written, had the written Word destroyed. God
then told the prophet to write the Word down again. The king had destroyed the
written Word, but he had not destroyed God's Word. God's Word is eternal
propositions that find expression in written statements. (W. Gary Crampton, By Scripture Alone: The Sufficiency of
Scripture [Unicoi, Tenn.: The Trinity Foundation, 2002], 156)
