Genesis 3:21 · Subject · Modesty and Simplicity
Dress in the Bible and the Church
Christian teachers have written rules of dress from Clement of Alexandria in the second century to John Wesley in the eighteenth.
In 1568 an Anabaptist discipline at Strasbourg ruled, “Tailors and seamstresses shall hold to the plain and simple style and shall make nothing at all for pride's sake.”
And the LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them.
- Books
- Genesis, 1 Timothy, 1 Peter
- Hold in memory
- 1 Peter 3:3 to 4
Summary
Scripture gives clothing to cover the shame that came with the fall, to honour the priests who served at the altar, and to keep a line between men and women. The prophets and the apostles weigh costly display against the fear of God and good deeds. From the second century the church's teachers turned those texts into counsel on cost, colour and ornament, and they differed on how far a church may prescribe a dress.
- Paul and Peter addressed the dress texts to women and placed true adornment in good deeds and the heart.
- The fathers from Clement to Chrysostom judged costly ornament a show for human eyes.
- Richard Baxter and John Wesley asked for plain dress and warned against odd dress worn only to stand apart.
- The Old Order Amish and the conservative Mennonite churches still require a set plain dress of their members.
What Clothing Is For in Scripture
Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah and two letters of the apostles give clothing its purposes.
Modesty in Scripture reaches the clothes a believer chooses as well as the heart that chooses them. For more than eighteen hundred years the church has asked what that means for cloth, colour, jewels and cost.
The question here is what Scripture says clothing is for, and how the church's teachers have applied it since about 190. The answer joins the biblical texts on clothing to the counsel of the fathers, of the teachers after the Reformation and of the plain churches of today, with the questions on which they still divide.
Make holy garments for your brother Aaron, to give him glory and splendor.This command shows that the law made clothing an honour as well as a covering, since God ordered the high priest's dress for glory and splendour.
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, and a man must not wear women’s clothing, for whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD your God.This law keeps a line between the dress of men and of women, and later rules of dress cite it for that reason.
The LORD also says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty—walking with heads held high and wanton eyes, prancing and skipping as they go, jingling the bracelets on their ankles—Cyprian, Chrysostom and Barclay each cite Isaiah's oracle against the daughters of Zion when they warn against costly ornament.
The oracle ends with the LORD's judgment on that finery: “instead of fine clothing, sackcloth; instead of beauty, shame” (Isaiah 3:24).
Paul's teaching on covering the head in worship, in 1 Corinthians 11, has its own study.
The Church's Teaching on Dress in Its Dates
The entries run from the school of Alexandria to the plain churches of the Americas.
More than eleven centuries separate Chrysostom's homily from the Anabaptist discipline of 1568.
To scale: 9 of 10 stops dated; a bar is a span; a mark that would lie on another stands in a lane under the axis.
- Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, books 2 and 3About 190 to 215 ADHis years at Alexandria, from about 190 to his death about 215 (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women200 to 206 ADHis instructions to catechumens of 200 to 206 (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- Cyprian, On the Dress of VirginsBefore 258 ADHis martyrdom in 258 (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- John Chrysostom, Homily 8 on First Timothy386 to 407 ADHis preaching from 386 to his death in 407 (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- The Strasbourg Discipline of the Anabaptists1568 ADJ. C. Wenger, Dress (1956)
- The Concept of Cologne1591 ADJ. C. Wenger, Dress (1956)
- Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory1664 and 1665 ADBaxter's advertisement to the reader
- Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity1678 ADThe Quaker Heritage Press title page
- John Wesley, Advice to the People Called Methodists, with Regard to Dress1771 ADWesley's Works, volume 4, printed at Bristol
- More than 120,000 members of plain-dress Anabaptist and Mennonite groups in the Americas1980s ADRobert S. Kreider, Dress (1990)
A timeline of ten dated entries, each row naming the record that fixes its date.
Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory, Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, John Wesley, Advice to the People Called Methodists, with Regard to Dress, More than 120,000 members of plain-dress Anabaptist and Mennonite groups in the Americas
The Fathers on Dress
The four fathers tied their counsel on dress to show, to public witness, to the poor and to prayer.
Clement taught at Alexandria and wrote The Instructor as a guide to Christian conduct, with chapters on clothes, shoes and jewels. He judged dyed and flowered garments to be made for show: “Such clothing is for looking at, not for covering” (The Instructor 2.11). Yet he wrote that “the wearing of gold and the use of softer clothing is not to be entirely prohibited”, and he allowed a signet ring for sealing goods in the house (The Instructor 3.11). He asked plain dress of both sexes, for “the proper dress of the temperate man is what is plain, becoming, and clean”.
Tertullian of Carthage wrote On the Apparel of Women in two books. He traced ornament to the fallen angels of the book of Enoch, and he held that rarity alone makes gold and gems precious (book 1, chapters 2, 3 and 7). He closed the work with a rule of public witness: “To Christian modesty it is not enough to be so, but to seem so too” (book 2, chapter 13).
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, founded his treatise On the Dress of Virgins on Tertullian's work. He wrote it for the women who had vowed their virginity to Christ, and some of them were rich. To their claim that wealth should be used, he answered, “Let the poor feel that you are wealthy; let the needy feel that you are rich” (chapter 11).
John Chrysostom preached on 1 Timothy 2:8 to 10 and turned Paul's words on the women who came to church to pray. “Do you approach God to pray, with broidered hair and ornaments of gold?” he asked. To the consecrated virgins he said, “A virgin's dress should not be studied, but plain, and without labor” (Homily 8 on First Timothy).
Plain Dress After the Reformation
Teachers after the Reformation grounded plain dress in the fall, in sober ornament and in a single eye toward God.
J. C. Wenger's article on dress in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia (1956) records that the early Anabaptists wore the common clothing of their neighbours. Wenger writes that Menno Simons protested against conformity to the world in attire but “did not demand a special garb for the faithful”. He adds that the Concept of Cologne of 1591 judged it “impossible to prescribe for each individual what he shall wear, but requires simplicity of attire”.
The English pastor Richard Baxter wrote A Christian Directory in 1664 and 1665, and one part of it gives directions about apparel. He named four ends of clothing, which are warmth, protection from harm, sober ornament and the covering of shame. Ornament is the least of the four, for apparel should “adorn it soberly so far as beseemeth the common dignity of human nature”.
The Quaker Robert Barclay published his Apology in 1678. He taught that “it is not lawful for a Christian to use superfluities in apparel, as are of no use save for ornament and vanity”. His first reason went back to Genesis, for “the use of clothes came originally from the fall” (proposition 15, section 7).
John Wesley took plain dress from the Quakers. “I willingly adopted both, with some restrictions,” he wrote of their plainness of speech and of dress. His Advice, printed in his Works in 1771, asked the Methodists for apparel that is cheap and grave, and it gave one rule to carry: “Do every thing herein with a single eye.”
Robert S. Kreider, in the same encyclopedia's article of 1990, named the Old Order Amish the largest of the plain churches of the Americas. Most plain groups of Swiss Mennonite background share the plain coat, with a standing collar and no lapels, and the cape dress.
In his article of 1956 Wenger traced Mennonite plain dress to “the doctrine of separation from the world” and to a strong teaching against pride. He also judged, “Much of the peculiarly Mennonite costume and clothing regulation is probably of the latter character”, by which he meant the keeping of older forms by people slow to change.
The Dress Texts, Women and Men
The apostles' dress texts name women, and the teachers who applied them asked the same of men.
Tertullian gave a chapter to men who dye their hair and gaze into the mirror, and he ruled that “where God is, there modesty is” (book 2, chapter 8). Cyprian addressed his warning against altering the face to “married women also, and all of the sex alike” (chapter 15).
Barclay judged that the apostles named women because “Christian men in those days, deserved not in this respect so much to be reproved”. Wesley applied 1 Timothy 2:9 to women “and by parity of reason, men too”, and his Advice counsels men against coloured waistcoats and costly buckles.
Where Readers Disagree
Six readings divide the teachers of plain dress on a church rule of dress, on wealth and on pride, each with its holders and an objection.
A rule of dress: the church should prescribe plain dress for its membersThe Strasbourg Discipline (1568); the Old Order Amish, in Kreider's article on dress (1990)
Kreider reports in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia (1990) that the Old Order Amish “insist that all clothing be made of fabrics in solid colors”.
The objection: J. C. Wenger wrote in the same encyclopedia (1956), “The New Testament does not prescribe any form of garb or external dress symbol for Christians.”
A rule of dress: plainness should be asked without a uniformRichard Baxter, A Christian Directory; John Wesley, Advice with Regard to Dress
Wesley refused to copy the Quakers in “those little particularities of dress, which can answer no possible end, but to distinguish them from all other people”. Baxter's direction reads, “Affect not singularity in your apparel.”
The objection: Wenger found in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia (1956) that in the Mennonite bodies that kept no dress rules, “nonconformity in attire has largely become a dead letter”.
Wealth and country: what may be worn depends on a person's station and landRobert Barclay, Apology (1678)
“We shall not say, that all persons are to be clothed alike,” Barclay wrote. He allowed that “where silk abounds, it may be worn, as well as wool”. He also held that a rich man's giving up the finery he is used to “may be, in him, a greater act of mortification” than a servant's.
The objection: Cyprian told the rich virgins of Carthage that “it becomes not a virgin to boast of her riches” (On the Dress of Virgins 10).
Wealth and country: wealth gives no wider liberty in dressCyprian, On the Dress of Virgins; John Wesley, Advice
Cyprian told the rich that “not everything that can be done ought also to be done” (On the Dress of Virgins 9). Wesley asked that apparel be “far cheaper than others in your circumstances wear”.
The objection: Clement asked that garments be suited to “age, person, figure, nature, pursuits” (The Instructor 3.11), which allows a difference between one person and another.
Plainness and pride: chosen plainness guards humilityJohn Wesley, Advice; Robert Barclay, Apology
Wesley granted the saying that one may be humble in velvet, “for a person may wear sackcloth, and have no humility at all”. He answered, “But it is not true, that any one can chuse this, from a single eye to please God.”
The objection: Chrysostom warned that “there may be such a studied nicety in a simple dress, as that these are nothing to it” (Homily 8 on First Timothy).
Plainness and pride: plain dress can itself serve prideJohn Chrysostom, Homily 8 on First Timothy; Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory
Baxter listed among the counterfeits of humility “an affected meanness and plainness in apparel, while pride runs out some other way”.
The objection: Baxter himself told his readers, “Be much more suspicious of pride and excess in apparel, as the more common and dangerous extreme.”
Dress Under the Glory of God
The teachers differed on silk, rings and rules, yet each of them asked whom a garment is meant to please.
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.Paul's rule for eating and drinking reaches whatever a believer does, and Wesley's rule of a single eye asks the same of clothing.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Paedagogus), books 2 and 3, translated by William Wilson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885)
- Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, books 1 and 2, translated by S. Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 4 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885)
- Cyprian, Treatise 2, On the Dress of Virgins, translated by Robert Ernest Wallis, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 5 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1886)
- John Chrysostom, Homily 8 on First Timothy, translated by Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 13 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1889)
- The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907 to 1912), the articles Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, St. Cyprian of Carthage and St. John Chrysostom.
- Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory, part 1, Christian Ethics (written 1664 and 1665), chapter 4, part 5, and chapter 10, part 3, Directions about Apparel.
- Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (first published 1678), proposition 15, section 7, Quaker Heritage Press online text (2002)
- John Wesley, Advice to the People Called Methodists, with Regard to Dress, in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, volume 4 (Bristol: William Pine, 1771)
- J. C. Wenger (1956) and Robert S. Kreider (1990), "Dress", Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online; quoted at fifty words or fewer.
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