50 Crucial Questions - Question 31

31. Aren’t you guilty of a selective literalism when you say some commands in a text are permanently valid and others, like “Don’t wear braided hair” or “Do wear a head covering,” are culturally conditioned and not absolute?
All of life and language is culturally conditioned. We share with all interpreters the challenge of discerning how biblical teaching should be applied today in a very different culture. In demonstrating the permanent validity of a command, we would try to show from its context that it has roots in the nature of God, the gospel, or creation as God ordered it. We would study these things as they are unfolded throughout Scripture.
In contrast, to show that the specific forms of some commands are limited to one kind of situation or culture, (1) we search for clues in the context that this is so; (2) we compare other Scriptures relating to the same subject to see if we are dealing with a limited application or with an abiding requirement; and (3) we try to show that the cultural specificity of the command is not rooted in the nature of God, the gospel, or the created order. In the context of Paul’s and Peter’s teaching about how men and women relate in the church and the home, there are instructions not only about submission and leadership but also about forms of feminine adornment. Here are the relevant verses in our literal translation:
Likewise the women are to adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and sensibleness, not in braids and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, but, as is fitting for women who profess godliness, through good works. (1 Timothy 2:9-10)
Let not yours be the external adorning of braiding hair and putting on gold or wearing clothes, but the hidden person of the heart by the imperishable (jewel) of a meek and quiet spirit, which is precious before God. (1 Peter 3:3-5)
It would be wrong to say these commands are irrelevant today. One clear, abiding teaching in them is that the focus of effort at adornment should be on “good works” and on “the hidden person” rather than on the externals of clothing and hair and jewelry. Neither is there any reason to nullify the general command to be modest and sensible or the warning against ostentation. The only question is whether wearing braids, gold, and pearls is intrinsically sinful then and now.
There is one clear indication from the context that this was not the point. Peter says, “Let not yours be the external adorning of . . . wearing clothes.” The Greek does not say “fine” clothes (NIV and RSV) but just “wearing clothes,” that is, “the clothing you wear” (ESV) or “putting on dresses” (NASB). Now we know Peter is not condemning the use of clothes. He is condemning the misuse of clothes. This suggests, then, that the same thing could be said about gold and braids. The point is not to warn against something intrinsically evil but to warn against its misuse as an expression of self-exaltation or worldlymindedness. Add to this that the commands concerning headship and submission are rooted in the created order (in 1 Timothy 2:13-14), while the specific forms of modesty are not. This is why we plead innocent of the charge of selective literalism.