A response to Bernard's views on women wearing pants
This is our series of articles analyzing David Bernard's position on holiness. You are on the page that is in bold. Click on the links to go to a particular chapter:
- Links to Bernard's other books
- An analysis of Bernard's ''Essentials of Holiness''
- A response to Bernard's views on women's hair
- A response to Bernard's views on makeup and women's adornment
- A response to Bernard's views on women wearing pants
- Does Speaking in Tongues Prove You're Saved?
- Is baptism necessary for salvation?
- Modern day Pharisees?
Rebuttal of Bernard's Position on Women Wearing Pants
The argument that women must never wear trousers rests almost entirely on a single verse: Deuteronomy 22:5. "A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests all who do this." Bernard presents this as one of the "biblical, and therefore universal and unchanging" standards of holiness. He acknowledges that cultural context determines what counts as masculine dress in some cases — he uses the Scottish kilt as his example — but refuses to follow his own principle when it comes to pants. The result is an argument that contradicts itself at its most important point, rests on a misreading of the biblical text, ignores how Christians are to relate to the Mosaic Law, and applies a standard that the New Testament never endorses.
What the Hebrew Text Actually Says
Before asking what the verse means, we need to ask what it says. Most English translations render Deuteronomy 22:5 as something like "a woman must not wear men's clothing," but the Hebrew behind that translation is more specific and more interesting than the English suggests.
The phrase translated "men's clothing" is keli geber. The word keli does not primarily mean clothing. It means implements, tools, instruments, or articles — the same word used for weapons, utensils, and military gear elsewhere in the Old Testament. The word geber does mean "man," but specifically a man of strength or a warrior, not the generic Hebrew word for a human male. So keli geber is better translated "articles of a warrior" or "implements of a man." It is the second half of the verse that uses the specific word for clothing: simlat isha, "the garment of a woman."
Most careful commentators have noted that the verse is probably not a general prohibition on all cross-dressed clothing. It has a more specific background in the ancient world, likely involving two related concerns: pagan religious practices in which worshipers cross-dressed as part of fertility cult rituals, and the practical concern about women disguising themselves as men to participate in warfare or to escape social accountability. The verse sits in Deuteronomy's larger concern with maintaining the integrity of categories — the same chapter forbids mixing wool and linen in a garment (22:11), yoking an ox and a donkey together (22:10), and mixing kinds of seed in a vineyard (22:9). The underlying principle is the order God built into creation: different kinds belong to their kinds. The specific application is to gender distinctions in dress, probably in a ritual or military context.
Applying this verse to whether a twenty-first-century woman may wear tailored women's trousers requires a very long interpretive leap — and that leap involves the very hermeneutical assumptions Bernard himself refuses to apply consistently.
Bernard's Own Principle Works Against Him
Bernard freely acknowledges that culture shapes what counts as "men's clothing." He says explicitly: "In traditional Scottish culture, the kilt was a masculine garment, so a man wearing a kilt was not violating this principle even though it might look like a skirt. What matters is whether the garment pertains to a man in a given culture." He makes the same point about beards: acceptable in some eras, associated with other things in others.
This is a sensible hermeneutical move. Deuteronomy 22:5 cannot mean "women must wear the specific garments that ancient Israelite women wore," since that would require all Christian women to dress like women in the ancient Near East. Culture genuinely does determine what constitutes "men's clothing" and "women's clothing" in a given time and place.
But this is exactly where Bernard's argument collapses, because in modern Western culture women's trousers are unambiguously women's clothing. They are designed for female bodies. They are sold in women's sections. They are styled, cut, and marketed as clothing for women. They are understood by every person in modern Western society as women's garments. There is no culture-independent definition of "pants" as "men's clothing." In the seventeenth century, both men and women in many cultures wore robes and tunics that we might today describe as dresses. In the nineteenth century, women began wearing modified trousers for cycling, and those garments were designed and sold as women's clothing. Today the diversity of women's fashion across cultures makes the idea of a single universal form of "women's clothing" incoherent.
Bernard has set up a principle — culture determines what is masculine — and then refused to apply it when the conclusion runs against what he wants. That is not a hermeneutical principle. It is a preferred conclusion dressed in hermeneutical language.
The Mosaic Law and the Christian
There is a more foundational problem with Bernard's appeal to Deuteronomy 22:5. The question is not just what the verse says, but what authority it carries for Christians today. This requires asking what kind of law it is and how Christians relate to the Mosaic code.
Grudem's Systematic Theology walks through the careful distinctions scholars make between the moral law (the Ten Commandments as expressions of God's eternal moral character, summarized in the love commands), the ceremonial law (priestly regulations, sacrificial systems, dietary codes, and purity rules pointing forward to Christ), and the civil law (the specific legal regulations given to Israel as a theocracy governing life in the land). He explains that the moral law is reaffirmed throughout the New Testament and carries direct authority for Christians. The ceremonial law is fulfilled in Christ and no longer binding on his people. The civil law was given to Israel as a nation-state and does not directly govern Christians today, though the moral principles embedded within specific regulations may still be instructive.
Deuteronomy 22:5 falls squarely in the civil law section. It is a specific social regulation for ancient Israel, embedded in a series of regulations about social and agricultural life in the land. It is not one of the Ten Commandments. It is not reaffirmed or referenced anywhere in the New Testament. Whatever moral principle may underlie it — presumably the importance of maintaining gender distinctions — the specific application of that principle in this verse belonged to Israel's social and legal code, not to a universal binding command for all believers of all ages.
This is exactly the argument Gordon Fee makes in his Pentecostal Commentary on Galatians. Paul's letter to the Galatians establishes the principle that the Mosaic Law served as a "pedagogue" — a temporary guardian — until Christ came. Fee's commentary on Galatians 3:25 is direct: "The clear implication of this sentence is that the law has absolutely no further role in the lives of those who are in Christ, and therefore that the Galatian Gentiles are under no obligation to the law whatsoever." Fee goes on: "Christ brings an end to the law; in 5:14 he will go on to argue that the Spirit fulfills the purpose of the law." The law's function was temporary. It was given to "hem people in" until God's promise was fulfilled in Christ. Christians now live in that fulfillment, led by the Spirit who produces the character the law pointed toward but could not create.
This does not mean gender distinctions are unimportant. The New Testament affirms that men and women are different, that those distinctions matter in the home and the church, and that believers should not deliberately blur them. But the vehicle for that affirmation is not Deuteronomy 22:5 enforced through a civil code. It is the pastoral guidance of the letters, the fruit of the Spirit producing dignity and integrity in how believers present themselves, and the community's shared discernment about what honors God in their particular cultural context.
The Consistent Application Test
Deuteronomy 22:5 sits in the middle of chapter 22. That chapter also says:
"Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together" (v. 10). "Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together" (v. 11). "Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear" (v. 12). "If you find a bird's nest beside the road... do not take the mother with the young" (v. 6-7).
These regulations are in the same chapter, at the same level of authority in the text, and from the same Mosaic civil code as verse 5. Nobody in the UPCI insists that Christians must follow them. Bernard does not argue that women must avoid blended fabric or that men must make tassels on the corners of their cloaks. He does not teach that plowing with mismatched animals is a sin. These regulations are understood, correctly, as belonging to the ancient Israelite civil code and not directly applicable to modern Christians.
The principle of consistent application is one of the most basic tests for sound biblical reasoning. Geisler in his systematic theology is clear that if a hermeneutical principle produces selective results — applying some verses in a passage while ignoring others that are formally identical — the principle has been applied inconsistently. If Deuteronomy 22:10-12 are civil regulations for ancient Israel that do not directly bind Christians, then so is Deuteronomy 22:5. Bernard cannot have it both ways: either the Mosaic civil code is binding on Christians (and he needs to be consistent about the whole thing), or it is not (and Deuteronomy 22:5 cannot serve as the foundation for a universal prohibition).
The mixed fabric rule is especially pointed. Verse 11 of the same chapter says "Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together." If verse 5 is a "biblical, and therefore universal and unchanging" standard, then so is verse 11. Yet blended fabrics appear in almost every Oneness Pentecostal church every Sunday morning, including presumably on the pastor delivering the sermon against women's pants.
The New Testament's Silence
The argument from silence needs to be handled carefully in biblical interpretation — absence of a command does not always mean permission. But the complete silence of the New Testament on this specific question is significant precisely because the early church addressed many questions about gender and dress.
Paul discusses women's hair in 1 Corinthians 11. He discusses modest dress in 1 Timothy 2:9. Peter addresses women's adornment in 1 Peter 3:3-4. These passages show that when the apostles believed gender-related dress questions mattered, they wrote about them. The fact that no apostolic letter, no pastoral epistle, no church council instruction in the entire New Testament addresses the question of pants, trousers, or the specific garments women may wear is telling. If the prohibition on women wearing trousers were as important as Bernard claims — if it were genuinely "biblical, universal, and unchanging" — the New Testament's silence on it is difficult to explain.
Fee makes this point as a general principle in his Galatians commentary when reflecting on the tendency to add rules to the gospel: "It is amazing how historically Pentecostals, who often know about the Spirit the most, trust him the least, and have found it easy to add external regulations regarding food, dress, and entertainment, as a means of 'hemming people in.'" The specific language is striking — "hemming people in" is exactly the language Fee uses for the role of the Mosaic Law as a guardian before Christ. Adding a dress code derived from the Mosaic civil code to the gospel of grace is doing in the twenty-first century what the Galatian agitators were doing in the first.
What the Verse Is Actually Protecting
If Deuteronomy 22:5 is not a universal clothing regulation, what is it doing? The underlying principle is not hard to identify: it is protecting the integrity of gender distinctions. God created human beings as male and female, and that distinction is to be honored, not deliberately blurred or denied. That is a genuinely biblical principle, and it does carry moral weight.
But the way that principle applies depends entirely on what constitutes "blurring" gender distinctions in a given culture. A woman wearing a tailored pantsuit that every person in her culture recognizes as women's clothing is not blurring the distinction between male and female. A man wearing the same garment would be doing something very different. The garments that actually blur gender distinctions in modern Western culture are quite different from the question of whether women may wear trousers.
This is the interpretive work Bernard refuses to do. He identifies the underlying principle (maintain gender distinctions) but then skips directly to a specific application (no trousers on women) without asking whether that application actually serves the principle in a modern context. It doesn't, because women's trousers in modern culture are not men's clothing. They are not understood as men's clothing, they are not marketed as men's clothing, and wearing them does not cause any confusion about the wearer's gender.
Grudem's approach to applying Old Testament principles in new contexts is helpful here. He argues that when a principle from the Old Testament is carried into a new setting, the question must always be: does this specific application serve the underlying moral purpose? When it does, the application is wise. When it does not — when the specific application was culturally embedded in ancient practices that have no modern equivalent — the principle still stands but a new application must be sought that genuinely serves the same moral purpose in the new context.
The Logical Structure of the Argument
Underneath all the specific exegetical problems there is a basic logical failure. Bernard's argument, stripped of its elaborations, runs like this:
Deuteronomy 22:5 says women must not wear men's clothing. Pants are men's clothing. Therefore, women must not wear pants.
The entire weight of the argument rests on the second premise: pants are men's clothing. But that premise is simply false in modern Western culture. And Bernard himself already conceded the principle that culture determines what counts as men's clothing. He cannot concede that principle and then assert the second premise without explaining why pants are an exception to a principle he has already granted.
When the load-bearing premise of an argument is false, the conclusion does not follow. The syllogism fails. And this one fails at exactly the point Bernard most needs it to hold.
What Is Actually at Stake
The effect of teaching that women may not wear trousers is to create a highly visible external marker that serves as a boundary between the in-group and the outside world. Women in UPCI churches can be identified instantly by their clothing in a way that sets them apart from everyone around them. This visibility functions as a constant reinforcement of group identity and belonging.
There is nothing wrong with communities having distinctive practices. The problem arises when those practices are presented as "biblical, universal, and unchanging" commands when they are not. A community that says "we practice this as a tradition we have found meaningful, and we believe it serves the purpose of honoring gender distinctions in our context" has taken an honest position. A community that says "God requires this of all women everywhere, and violating it is a sin as grave as murder or idolatry" has made a claim the Bible does not support.
Bernard warns repeatedly in Essentials of Holiness against legalism. He says holiness must flow from love, not fear. He insists that the Spirit transforms from the inside out. Those instincts are right. But the practical section of the booklet undermines them at every turn by adding to the gospel exactly the kind of external requirements Paul called a perversion of the good news. The women told they cannot wear trousers because God detests it are not experiencing holiness that flows from love. They are experiencing a rule whose biblical basis cannot withstand examination, enforced by a community structure that makes questioning it very costly.
Paul's word for that, in Galatians, is strong.
This rebuttal engages David K. Bernard, Essentials of Holiness (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1989). Counter-sources: Gordon D. Fee, Galatians: Pentecostal Commentary (Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2007), on Galatians 3:23-25 and 1:6-9; Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), chapters on the Mosaic Law and application of Scripture; Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology vol. 1-4 (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002-2005). Key passages: Deuteronomy 22:5-12; Galatians 3:23-25; 1:6-9; 5:13-26.