Robin, your reminder on context is well taken. The idea that the 'attire' there refers to righteousness is to be honest new to me, i will have to think over it.

Peter, how ironic you should post that, it was ready that very article by William Perkins that promoted me to post this.

To be honest, i can't see how he drew such a conclusion from scripture. i know that he is not alone in holding such a view...if i am not wrong Gill and Henry wrote the same?

Nonetheless, i don't really buy it... I don't see what the corinthian passages have to do with wearing of foreign attire. The abuses Paul condmened stemed from a universal headship principle, and not because they were against the culture of the times, per se.

So that leaves us with Zephaniah...which states God's displeasure against those who wear 'strange' or 'foreign' attire. How do we conclude he is here condemning foreign styles of dress? And even if those people were going to be punished on account of their dress, could it not rather be as a sympthom of some underlying sin, whether extravagance or the hankering after foreign nations.

The idea that we are to keep to the dress of our own country is not, to my knowledge, picked up anywhere else in scripture. In our modern age it has become even harder to distinguish what is the 'proper' dress for a country or which culture/ country a certain individual might belong to. While considerations like those are not qualification to obedience, i find it hard to imagine that God wanted to have his children bogged down in considerations like those.

What do others on the board think?

__________________
Mark
Independent baptist
Singapore