Are Christians Supposed to Tithe?

by Jack Poirier (Jerusalem Perspective)

K/s note: An interesting article for deeper thought.  After reading this article... we remember it is the spirit of love that should move the giver.  Love always gives more than "Law" or any "mandate of obligation.") Luke 6:38 and II Corinthians 8 & 9)

Within popular piety in America today, it is widely believed that the Bible instructs Christians, either explicitly or implicitly, to give ten percent of their income to their local churches. Pastors teach this in the name of the biblical notion of “tithing”, a term applied to the giving of ten percent of one’s crops and flocks to the Levite. As we will see, however, the Bible nowhere even remotely suggests that Christians are supposed to give ten percent of their income to the church, or anything. Moreover, the plain facts about biblical tithing contradict the very possibility of any sort of Christian tithing, or at least of the possibility of basing such a practice upon a biblical model. Let us leave aside the question of whether Christians are bound to the Old Testament commandments for now, and look first at some of the specifics concerning tithing during the days of the Temple.

In the Bible there are three different tithes (although the third is really a part of the second). The first (Leviticus 27) is the best known, but even it, when properly understood, does not correspond at all with the notion that a tithe represents the giving of ten percent of everyone’s income to the Temple. There are two central facts about this first tithe that contradict the common conception. First, it did not apply to everyone’s income. Rather, it consists of ten percent of the crops grown and the livestock raised by Israelite (later Jewish) farmers within the land of Canaan. Israelites living in the land of Canaan who made their living by any other means did not have to pay this tithe, and Israelites farming outside of the land of Canaan did not have to pay this tithe. This is because the first tithe was not a required payment for livelihood per se, but rather it represented payment for tenancy on God’s land. In other words, the first tithe was not a sort of thank offering for one’s livelihood, as it is commonly construed today: rather, it applied only to those farming within the land of Canaan.

The second misconception about the first tithe is just as significant: although farmers gave ten percent of their produce to the Levites, only one percent of their produce actually wound up going to the priests who minister in the Temple (Num 18:20-32), for whom it represented their livelihood, and none of it went to the administration of the Temple generally. This is because the first tithe was used primarily as a sort of social security system: the Levites were prohibited, by the Law, to own land, so God provided for their welfare by giving them ninety percent of the tithe paid by those who were land tenants. The farmer gave all his tithe to the Levites, and it was only the latter who separated out the portion going to the priests officiating in the Temple. (As far as the farmer was concerned, all the tithe went to pay for the welfare of the Levites.) In other words, if the tithe corresponds to anything in today’s society, it is not the giving of an set amount to a church, but the payment of a social security tax to the federal government. The Old Testament “church” (viz. the Temple) actually wound up with none of the farmer’s income, except insofar as the priests officiating were given a tithe of the Levites’ portion to eat as a heave offering. This is a far cry from the idea that Christians (whether they’re farmers or anything else) are supposed to give ten percent of all their income to the church.

There was also a second tithe, discussed in Deuteronomy 14. The procedures for this tithe vary according to a seven-year cycle. In the first, second, fourth, fifth, and (probably) sixth years of the cycle, a tithe of one’s produce was to be taken to Jerusalem, to be offered up and consumed (by the tither) within the holy city. If a farming family lived too far to carry its produce all the way to Jerusalem, it could redeem its tithe and bring the money (adding twenty percent extra) to Jerusalem, where they were to buy, according to the language of the King James Version, “whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink” (Deut 14:26). In other words, this tithe was not really given away, but rather consumed by the tither as an offering to the Lord. Obviously, this tithe is also a far cry from the dominant notion of tithing in the church today. It corresponds more to a sort of potluck dinner and drinking party, for farmers only. (Needless to say, few pastors are in the habit of quoting this verse: When is the last time you heard a pastor tell his flock that they should spend their tithe on a steak dinner or a bottle of liquor?)

The third tithe was simply the tithe from the third year of the seven-year cycle (Deut 14:1-29; 26:1-19). (There was no tithe in the seventh year since the land was not permitted to be farmed that year.) In this year the tithe was to be given to the Levites, the widows, and the orphans. (In Deut 26:12, the third year is called “the year of tithing”, which seems to imply that the arrangement we called the “second tithe” wasn’t really a tithe.) This also does not correspond with modern ideas about tithing. Rather, it is strictly for poverty relief. Again, none of this tithe went toward the Temple.

If none of any of the three tithes went towards the administration of the Temple, then how was that institution supported? This was done through a Temple tax, leveled on all male Israelites over twenty years of age, to help subsidize Temple operations (Exodus 30). It should be noted, however, that this Temple tax was a fixed amount, and was not based on a percentage of income. Everyone, rich and poor alike, paid the same amount.

We have not even asked about the relationship of the church to the cultic law, but we can already see a terrific problem with the idea that Christians are supposed to give ten percent of their income to the church: none of the biblical tithes even remotely corresponds to this scheme. The closest correspondence between the biblical system and any modern church practices of which I am aware is found in the relationship between the Temple tax and the present-day arrangement, used by many Eastern Orthodox churches, of charging a set annual amount for membership dues (usually around $300-$500 per family). The idea of everyone paying ten percent of their income to the local church is utterly foreign to the Bible.

We have seen that the Old Testament laws cannot be made to fit with modern ideas of tithing, but what about the question of whether these laws, in principle, can be extended to the church? Here, I will repeat what I said above: the Bible nowhere even remotely suggests that Christians are to tithe. All of the references to tithing in the Gospels refer to the Israelite/Jewish system, and when Jesus, in response to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, expounds on the proper way to tithe, that cannot be construed as a warrant for Christian tithing any more than his expounding on the proper way to offer an animal sacrifice can be construed as a warrant for Christian animal sacrifices. Jesus’ remarks about tithing (Matt 23:23) are made within a series of injunctions that cannot possibly be extended to the church in its entirety. (Two verses later Jesus affirms for the Pharisees the necessity of observing the ritual purity laws with respect to the washing of cups and plates.) This immediately raises the question of whether one can arbitrarily decide that a particular injunction is binding upon Christians. We cannot practice selective reading simply for convenience’s sake.

This goes for how we read Malachi 3: How can anyone categorically state that Malachi’s reference to tithing is relevant for Christians, when the same book speaks, in the same terms, about the proper way to sacrifice an animal upon the altar? One cannot have it both ways. Unless one actually believes that Christians should offer animals as sacrifices, one must accept the burden of proof for claiming that the references to tithing in Matthew 23 and Malachi 3 are binding on Christians. (Since pastors often quote Malachi 3 to support their beliefs on tithing, it bears mentioning that that passage is not directed at the farmers who give the tithe, but at the crooked priests, who were collecting the tithe from the farmers but taking a cut off the top before depositing it in the storehouse.)

I should also mention that Paul’s remarks about giving have nothing to do with tithing. When he told believers to put something aside at the beginning of the week, he was talking about a discretionary amount for a one-time relief offering for the poor saints in Jerusalem. There is no allusion anywhere in his writings to the giving of a set amount, nor is there any allusion to any sort of regular giving to the local congregation. (In late antiquity, synagogues and churches were built by well-to-do benefactors, who donated different parts of the building in their entirety [and were usually credited for it in an inscription].)[1] All of this, of course, calls into question the common “observation” that Jesus tithed. Unless we have good reason to think that Jesus was a farmer or a Levite (or an overscrupulous Pharisee who tithed what he ate just in case the farmer who grew it failed to tithe it), then there is correspondingly little reason to suppose that Jesus ever tithed.

How do we account for how widespread these errors in understanding are today? The obvious answer is wrapped up in the fact that pastors and other church officials have a vested interest in the income that tithing provides. God cannot be pleased with the misinformation campaigns that are being waged from pulpits, and God cannot be pleased with the financial strain that pastors are putting on church members by making them believe that tithing is a scriptural obligation. If Jesus censured the Pharisees for loading burdens upon the people that they could not bear, would he not censure today’s pastors for doing the same thing?

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[1] By the way, we do have an idea when the shallow reading of these passages on tithing was first adopted by the church, that is, when the idea of Christian tithing began: it was in the sixth century. (There’s a chapter detailing the sixth-century origins of Christian tithing in R. Kottje, Studien zum Einfluss des Alten Testamentes auf Recht und Liturgie des frühen Mittelalters (6. - 8. Jahrhundert) [2nd ed.; Bonner historische Forschungen 23; Bonn, Ludwig Röhrscheid, 1970].) The practice was advocated by the Council of Tours in 567 and the second Council of Macon in 585, and it became obligatory (by law) in the Carolingian empire (in 765). [return to article]

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