What does the Orthodox Church teach about tithing. In a lot of Protestant
churches it is expected that you tithe 10% for every paycheck and that is a big
aspect of your entire your faith as a whole and that comes before
everything including house payments or anything else that there may be, tithing
comes before. So what does the Orthodox Church teach about that?
Fr. Panayiotis: But if they require that you actually tithe isn't that works? Isn't that part of works and
so if you are saved by faith alone why should you be tithing
why should you be required to do such a great sacrifice in a way. That's a good
question and I raise that because I have found nowhere in the early
Christian documents, nowhere in the early Christian church where tithing is
required by Christians. But you know what was required? To give their whole lives
... their whole lives 100% of their lives and Christians understood that as
they died for the faith as they were persecuted then they were arrested and
tortured and and they were killed they gave a hundred percent not 10%. So that's
my one response the other response is that the Jews were asked to tithe in the
Old Testament because there was an entire tribe -- the Levites -- that owned no
land. The other tribes owned land the land was divided among the other tribes
except for the Levites and the Levites didn't have any land because they were
set apart so that they can serve at the temple. So that they had no other income
except whatever the other tribes would bring them. That was the way that
they supported their families and that was the way that they were
able to dedicate their lives to serving the temple. These were the priests,
the Levites, the servants of the temple. They were the teachers as
well. They were the ones who dedicated their lives in studying the
scriptures, in teaching the people, in receiving people for confession, in
helping people to bring the sacrifices onto the altar,
and this was an entire tribe and the only way to support those people was
by tithing. So once we move from there into the Christian period after the
Temple is destroyed that requirement of tithing completely goes away naturally
because there is no Temple and there is no Levite group there is no tribe
serving at the temple and there is no need to bring gifts and sacrifices.
There's no need to actually pay for those people to live at the
Temple. Then during the Christian period even after we have the
establishment of the priesthood, the Christian priesthood, the
Christian priesthood could be seen as the continuation of the of the Jewish
priesthood, of the Aaronic priesthood and the Christian priesthood is seen
as the continuation of what was happening at the Temple because now
every Christian Church is a temple to God. So now the the priests are
being supported by the people so the people bring their gifts to the church
and they bring their gift to support the clergy, the priests. But there was never a
requirement for 10% because now the requirement that is the total dedication
of our lives to God. Of course once we move into the period when the church
grows and the Christian Roman Empire is created after Constantine
opens the doors of freedom for the Christians and the Christians are able
to convert the entire Roman Empire then we have the wealthier Christians which
was the case in the earlier times as well bringing in money, more money than
anybody else, because there was a lot of poverty at the time, to support the
churches and to build the churches and to build temples and to support
the clergy. Now that was the case as I said earlier on because in the early
church in the Agape meals which were held at the homes of the
rich and the food for that evening was supplied by the rich and the poor in the
community were not required to bring anything. So where does it tithing come
into the Christian world, it comes after the Reformation when the Reformed
churches now they needed support so they went back to the old testament they said
God required the Jews to give 10% of all their income therefore we need now to
have support because the kings are not there to help us, because the
governments are not there to help us, then we need support and this becomes
more profound and more pressed upon the people, the Protestant people
in the United States where the is no government to support them while in
Europe there was. So the 10% came in handy because he was a lot of support to
keep the churches going and so that was established. For us Orthodox it's
kind of a foreign concept and that actually has harmed us in some way to
help us grow financially but at the same time it's also foreign because
I don't think it should be enforced as a requirement from
Christians but Christians should understand better how their church needs
to be supported and they should give as much as they
can proportionally to their income and that's their job and their
responsibility to figure out in front of God in faith. So their faith should guide
them on how important is their church to them and they can give even more than
10% and there are some people who give a lot more than 10% in the Orthodox Church
who have money and who are able to do and that's how we exist today in the
United States.