Nudity In Eden

The creation and fall story in Genesis emphasizes that the first humans were naked and had no anxieties about this state (2:25).  After they disobey God, the man and woman realize they are naked (3:7).  They would have been able to perceive this about themselves before, of course, but their psychological attitude towards their nudity changed.  God makes garments of skin and clothes them (3:21), but nothing is said about nudity being evil or sexual, with the two not being equivalent anyway.  The skins are implied to have come from the sacrificed animals, a reminder of the severity of sin and how it demands death, as well as a way of expressing that God must extend mercy to escape this deserved fate for wrongdoing.  To see, appreciate, or practice extramarital nudity would still be morally permissible (Deuteronomy 4:2).

The evangelical stance is that it is sinful or at least "shameful" to be seen naked by anyone other than one's spouse, as well as sinful to see the nudity of a person one is not married to except perhaps in a medical situation, if even that.  Not only does the text not say this or even hint at it, but if it taught that there is something sexually shameful about nudity, it would be objectively false because nudity is not sexual; sexuality is sexual, and it can be expressed or enjoyed with or without clothing.  As for the text itself, Genesis 3 leaves no ambiguity about whether this was God's intention in providing animal skins to cover the bodies of Adam and Eve after they betrayed him.

That Adam and Eve were given clothes despite being in each other's presence--not that them observing or being observed by other humans, regardless of whether they were clothed, is sinful in the first place--would mean that it is impossible for God's covering to have anything to do with shielding them from the curious or admiring eyes of people outside the marriage.  While holding that strict literalism is the intended meaning of many Biblical passages and that Adam and Eve were the first husband and wife, those who object to this think that the very context of being clothed in the presence of one's spouse for symbolic purposes means that there is a moral obligation to not see nudity or be seen naked by those outside the relationship!

It would also be false that God's good creation of the openly unclothed human body would lose its status of goodness simply because the moral alignment of the first humans' minds had shifted.  Marriage did not become evil because humans had sinned.  The nature of something like marriage has to do with marriage itself and God's nature (and, of course, the logical truths that govern all things).  The same is true of nudity.  Emotionalistic love of tradition even as so many prudish Christians are hypocrites by craving the sight of the human body is what keeps this logically and Biblically erroneous idea in power.  Whether nudity is or is not sexual actually makes no difference here, despite nudity being intrinsically nonsexual--it is a nonsexual thing that can be perceived or used in sexual ways, like many other things.

Even if nudity was sexual, though it is by logical necessity a nonsexual thing that can be enjoyed sexually, human sexuality is still nonsinful according to Biblical philosophy because it is a creation of a God whose nature is moral goodness (Genesis 1:31).  Sensory pleasure of sexual and nonsexual kinds is a divinely intended part of human existence.  To shun the human body or sexuality in any way besides that of personal, non-ideological aversion is to forsake a vital part of Biblical metaphysics and ethics.  Having a subjective preference to not see nudity or be naked before others does not mean someone believes anything irrational or does anything immoral, and nudity is not morally mandatory.  It is instead the highest physical creation of God that all are free to find physical comfort, sensual fulfillment, and sexual delight in.