Modesty in Marriage

I am not exactly well known for having thoughts on marriage, much less writing on it--my lack of experience, qualitative and quantitative, renders my authority in such an area dubious at best. But, there was a recent conversation on the ANGEL student discussion forum regarding propriety in marriage, precipitated by a comment I made that was deemed rather"old-fashioned." (I am finding that, even for a PHC student, I am very conservative on pretty much every count except my music). I am not going to repeat the conversation or its specific subject here, but I shall post two passages from recent readings that I think are relevant. The Peter passage is relevant, not for the injunction to be "submissive/subject," but for its discussion of modesty and beauty. Apologies to Patrick Henry, but "if this be prudery, gentlemen, let us make the most of it."


2 Peter 3:1-6 "1Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;

2While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

3Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

4But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

5For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:

6Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement."



From Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book II, Chapter 8)

Section 44. Precautions to be observed in married life. Everything repugnant to chastity here condemned.

Moreover, when spouses are made aware that their union is blessed by the Lord, they are thereby reminded that they must not give way to intemperate and unrestrained indulgence. For though honourable wedlock veils the turpitude of incontinence, it does not follow that it ought forthwith to become a stimulus to it. Wherefore, let spouses consider that all things are not lawful for them. Let there be sobriety in the behaviour of the husband toward the wife, and of the wife in her turn toward the husband; each so acting as not to do any thing unbecoming the dignity and temperance of married life. Marriage contracted in the Lord ought to exhibit measure and modesty - not run to the extreme of wantonness. This excess Ambrose censured gravely, but not undeservedly, when he described the man who shows no modesty or comeliness in conjugal intercourse, as committing adultery with his wife.

Lastly let us consider who the Lawgiver is that thus condemns fornication: even He who, as he is entitled to possess us entirely, requires integrity of body, soul, and spirit. Therefore, while he forbids fornication, he at the same time forbids us to lay snares for our neighbour's chastity by lascivious attire, obscene gestures, and impure conversation. There was reason in the remark made by Archelaus to a youth clothed effeminately and over-luxuriously, that it mattered not in what part his wantonness appeared. We must have respect to God, who abhors all contaminations whatever be the part of soul or body in which it appears. And that there may be no doubt about it, let us remember, that what the Lord here commends is chastity. If he requires chastity, he condemns every thing which is opposed to it. Therefore, if you aspire to obedience, let not your mind burn within with evil concupiscence, your eyes wanton after corrupting objects, nor your body be decked for allurement; let neither your tongue by filthy speeches, nor your appetite by intemperance, entice the mind to corresponding thoughts. All vices of this description are a kind of stains which despoil chastity of its purity.

An interesting passage from my Freedom's Foundations II reading...I have often pondered some of the problems of the modern evangelical church, and while I don't think all of them are directly traceable to this point, a good many are. As J. I. Packer wrote in his introduction to Luther's Bondage of the Will, it is debatable whether Luther and the other Reformers would even claim the "evangelical" church as their descendants--indeed, the Synod of Dordt (1619) declaimed the Arminian Remonstrance as a return to Romanism in its central principle. The Arminians (and free-will theologians generally) claimed to retain the Protestant principle of justification sola fide without works, but, by making faith an act of man's will rather than a gift of God, essentially made it into a work (and it's worth noting that the word translated "work" in Ephesians means any action, not just "works of the law"). Anyhow, from Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order (pp. 232-233).



"What were the knottiest questions dividing the Catholic establishment and the Reformers? The Protestant leaders, though they attacked the corruptions of the sixteenth-century Church, argued that the visible Church's moral decay was the result of theological errors into which the papacy and the heirarchy had fallen. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin declared that the profoundest difference between Papists and Protestants was the question of freedom of the will. Luther debated this subject with the Dutch humanist Erasmus, in 1524. Is the will free or enslaved? This is "the real essential thing, the real knotty problem," Luther said; "instead of...tiresome trifles about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and other futilities of the same order."

Now the medieval church, with Aristotle as its classical philosophical authority, gradually had modified St. Augustine's doctrine that man is wholly corrupt--that so far as man has free will, this is opportunity only to choose among evil acts. Man is a creature of mingled good and evil impulses, the Church had come to teach: in the depths of the soul, there lingers an essence or spark of divine substance, potentially enabling man (if given grace) to exercise his will for good. This medieval teaching...the Reformers denied utterly; they returned to the stern teaching of St. Augustine. "For man cannot but put self-seeking first, loving himself above everything else," said Luther: "this is the root of sinning."

Because man is utterly corrupted by self-love, the Reformers reasoned, man enjoys no freedom to act for the good. He can be saved from his total depravity only by the arbitrary grace of God. Because the Church, or rather its heirarchy, had fallen away from this dogma, the Reformers continued, the Church had been corrupted; the notorious system of indulgences for money was merely one of many abuses resulting from abandonment of the pure doctrine of original sin. Therefore the Church might be purged of corruption only if its ancient dogmas should be restored."