"For instance, how many inches of the legs must be covered? Ask anyone who believes in modesty why an inch or millimeter further isn't the standard. Not only will no one concur about where the line is, but they will have no explanation as to why their choice is correct but a less 'modest' line isn't. In philosophy, that's called 'begging the question' . . .
So people are morally free to wear or not wear whatever they wish. Any moral opposition to their choice is indefensible, as one can never justify such criticism from any argument or passage of Scripture. Some Christians realize that if there is no standard for modesty then there is no rational or moral way to condemn nudity, and they would object to what I have explained in this post on such grounds. But a Christian who would dispute this claim must contradict what the Bible actually teaches about it."
While I addressed the extensive theological and moral errors of asserting that the human body is sinful, causes sin, or that wearing or not wearing certain types of clothing is morally wrong in the post quoted above, here I wanted to explore the second part of my excerpt about nudity. I will prove here that the Bible permits and sometimes even condones public nudity. I know, that sentence would give an evangelical like John Piper a heart attack, as the traditional evangelical position is that nudity is only morally permissible in the context of marriage (with possible exceptions like urgent medical situations). This article will not primarily attack the accusations that nudity is innately sexual, offensive, or socially unacceptable, as I have partially dealt with similar issues here [1] and will also falsify these claims in a future continuation to this series, but instead I will prove in this post that the Bible:
1. Is not opposed to public nudity.
2. Condones public nudity at times.
And now I will begin presenting Scriptural proof and support for allowance of nudity.
--Genesis 2:25--"The man and his wife were naked, and they felt no shame."
This sentence may be ignored by many people but it divulges an intriguing fact: God intentionally created human beings naked. The Christian who holds that nudity was created good but became vile (outside of a very limited marital or medical context) after the introduction of sin has to indulge in inconsistency when he or she says that other things created good (like marriage, sexuality, beauty, or pleasure) did not become inherently corrupt or sinful. Well, some have occasionally taught that even those things became depraved!
What of the fall and God providing clothing for Adam and Eve in the immediately following chapter? Genesis 3 changes nothing about the status of the human body. Some might appeal to Genesis 3 as the one place that actually condemns public nudity outside of marriage, but there are multiple grievous flaws with this:
1. God clothing Adam and Even had nothing at all to do with nudity being evil or preventing sexual desire (which is the usual basis for the common, unsophisticated Christian condemnation of nudity).
2. There is no command, not even one issued to Adam and Eve, revealing a moral obligation to wear clothing. Nowhere else in the entire Bible is such a moral obligation ever mentioned or implied apart from several limited context-specific activities [2].
3. It is idiotic to say that God communicated in Genesis 3 that nudity is only acceptable if shared between a husband and wife because that is the very context God clothed Adam and Eve in. It would be senseless and contradictory of God to convey that nudity is morally prohibited apart from nudity with one's spouse by giving moral instructions for the first husband and wife to wear clothes around each other.
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| Our society worships female beauty, but God created both male and female bodies beautiful, attractive, and alluring--in a way that is not inherently or exclusively sexual [3]. Exposure to nudity could help people separate the sensuality of nudity from the unrelated sexual overtones projected onto general nudity by American culture. |
--Exodus 22:26-27--"If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate."
Mosaic Law doesn't merely not condemn public nudity, it contains legislation blatantly allowing it. Since this passage undeniably says that when people offered their cloak as a temporary pledge they were without the only covering for their body they possessed, it serves as irrefutable proof that in Mosaic Law not only was public nudity recognized and not condemned but it was totally allowed. These two verses cannot be legitimately avoided by skepticism about whether or not full nudity is involved because they explicitly mention that a person who offered their cloak as a pledge surrendered the "only covering" he or she had for their body. God did not express any moral revulsion at the public exposure and viewing of their body because the man or woman who used their sole garment as a pledge did not sin.
Isaiah 20:1-4--"In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it--at that time the Lord spoke to Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, 'Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.' And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot. Then the Lord said, 'Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared--to Egypt's shame.'"
People sometimes defensively propose that Isaiah did not remove all of his clothing but left his undergarment around his body, yet we have no reason to believe that the Hebrew word does not convey total nudity. Also, the Assyrian captors referenced here did not leave some strategic undergarment fastened on their prisoners but forced them to travel in complete nudity, "stripped and barefoot . . . with buttocks bared", so for God to symbolically foreshadow this by instructing Isaiah to simply remove an outer layer of clothing would be inconsistent. Their nudity would be shameful not because nudity is intrinsically shameful but because it would be involuntarily forced onto them.
This passage is highly important because philosophy and Biblical theology demonstrate that God is a morally perfect entity. Various Bible passages confirm this repeatedly, such as James 1:13, where it is declared that God never tempts anyone to commit an evil action. If public nudity is sinful, God would have by nature been unable to order Isaiah to engage in it to demonstrate a point to his observers, much less for three entire years.
1 Samuel 19:23-24--"So Saul went to Naioth at Ramah. But the Spirit of God came upon even him, and he walked along prophesying until he came to Naioth. He stripped off his robes and also prophesied in Samuel's presence. He lay that way all day and night. This is why people say, 'Is Saul among the prophets?'"
Saul removed all of his clothes and prophesied nude in front of public spectators, who mistook him for a genuine prophet. Apparently Jewish prophets were very comfortable with nudity and used it frequently to make a point, as Isaiah and Micah (Micah 1:8, 11) did as well. Every translation I've read besides the specific NIV version quoted here makes it quite clear that Saul shed all of his clothes.
--Deuteronomy 23:1--"No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord."
While this does not usually rank among the traditional verses used by pro-nudity theologians, it subtly implies that male nudity was necessary at least at some point prior to entrance to formal worship of Yahweh. If a castrated man could not participate in social religious worship, how could such a requirement be upheld and enforced without visual verification of the condition of his genitals? It would be entirely impossible to monitor otherwise.
Then, of course, we have Deuteronomy 25:11-12.
--Deuteronomy 25:11-12--"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
First of all, it would be nearly impossible for the woman to seize the man's penis or genitals unless he wore no clothing, as the cloak owned by a Jewish person would be looser than much of our modern clothing, and even with current clothes it would be difficult to physically grab someone's "private parts". Second, translators and scholars have disagreed with the present English translation and insisted instead that the true punishment was publicly shaving her pubic hair, which would inescapably require that her clothing be removed, therefore exposing her naked body during the administration of the penalty. I must add that this passage does not qualify as undeniable proof of pro-nudity theology like Exodus 22:26-27 does, but due to its partially speculative nature stands as more of a strong support, not an absolute proof. Regardless, the man was likely naked when the woman assaulted his groin area and she was definitely naked during her punishment if the assigned penalty was pubic hair shaving. The phrase "private parts" is just the selected English translation referring to the man's penis or genitals and does not have anything to do with an implied moral duty to cover that portion of the human anatomy.
Conclusion
In Biblical times, public nudity was so expected and common that it was normal. Jewish people worked naked (John 21:7), preached naked (Isaiah 20:1-6, 1 Samuel 19:23-24, Micah 1:8, 11), walked naked until their cloaks were returned (Exodus 22:26-27), (males) exposed their bodies to allow circumcision to serve as a sign and to obtain access to community worship (Deuteronomy 23:1), and God, Mosaic Law, and God's personal representatives never even implied that any of it was sinful. It is simply untrue and deceptive to claim the Bible teaches that only someone's spouse has the right to view their nude body. There is not anything innately threatening or inherently sexual about this and no one can appeal to the Bible to construct some misguided moral or rational case against public nudity.
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| The Bible never prescribes general laws against public nudity or says that our bodies are shameful and must therefore be covered. |
Many of the reasons Christians (or Muslims) oppose nudity are the same reasons they believe bikinis and other forms of clothing are evil, but I thoroughly refuted those pathetic arguments in the link attached at the bottom of this post. Nudity (or any kind of clothing) cannot make anyone objectify or lust after another person [4], was never prohibited by God, and has little to no moral dimensions in and of itself. This article was designed to not focus as much on proving such truths as on simply establishing that the Bible contains many verses that directly support or at least permit nudity. A full explanation on how nudity is not intrinsically sexual and the ethics involved with that will surface later. But I know for sure (and there is only a very precise spectrum of truths that one can know for sure) that nudity is not always sexual because I've been naked many times in my life to shower or change clothes and there was nothing sexual or unnatural about it. I know this with absolute certainty, and there are very few things anyone can know with absolute certainty. But most Christians would probably agree with this, adding only that nudity in the presence of a representative of the opposite gender to whom one is not married is intrinsically sexual or evil. This too is incorrect and could be refuted by reason, testimony, or experience. Simply adding the presence of another person does not by logical necessity make the condition of nudity sexual or sinful in any way. But even if public nudity did inherently involve a somewhat sexual tone, that still would not mean that it is sinful or morally depraved at all. It would just mandate self-control. So regardless of whether or not it is "sexual", there can be nothing sinful about public nudity. Conservative Christians usually don't realize that insisting nudity and revealing clothing cause lust is just as intellectually and morally retarded as saying guns cause murder, yet they believe the first statement while rightly and vehemently opposing the other--but they can't have it both ways.
In the comments to the post connected to the first link at the bottom of this page, I wrote:
"The argument that the body is improper or sinful contradicts everything the Bible and logic could say on the issue and actually borderlines on a heresy that completely undermines what God declared about not just the human body but all of creation: that it is "very good" (Genesis 1:31)."
This information must finally be absorbed by theologians and Christian laypeople. So, I will conclude with three theological syllogisms to summarize a select handful of my central points.
Syllogism one
1. Everything God created is good (Genesis 1:31).
2. God created humans nude (Genesis 2:25).
3. Therefore nudity is good.
Syllogism two
1. God cannot command anyone to sin (James 1:13).
2. God commanded Isaiah to display his nudity (Isaiah 20:1-6).
3. Therefore nudity is not always a sin.
Syllogism three
1. An action or thought is sinful if it is condemned by the Bible or if a Biblical principle condemns it by pure logical extension.
2. Public nudity is not condemned by the Bible and no Biblical principle condemns it by pure logical extension.
3. Therefore public nudity is not sinful.
The first part of this series was only intended to prove that the Bible condones and allows for public nudity, while the upcoming second part will refute anti-nudity theological arguments and the eventual third part will analyze the subject from a generic moral and rational perspective without any particular Biblical references.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
[2]. See Exodus 20:26.
[3]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html
[4]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/can-clothing-objectify.html
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