Tithing Hermeneutics No. 1

Matt and Kaj did some heavy lifting in our Friday morning Biblical Gym last week. The subject was the science of Hermeneutics, i.e., the science of interpreting Scripture, and the question for discussion was:

Does the Bible encourage Christians to tithe?

The point of our hermeneutics discussions are not to prove or disprove a practice or belief. Rather, what we want to do is develop our biblical thinking to the point where whatever we say to our congregations and students can be said with utter conviction and complete biblical authority. The times are too strategic for us as leaders to share weak opinions and vague perspectives that our people can’t sink their Christian teeth into. We want to fulfill 1Pe 4.11: “If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.” To me that means preaching and teaching with conviction, clarity, passion and authority. And for me, that’s what hermeneutics is about.

So, in the process of analyzing our biblical convictions, a question like...

1a. Does the Bible encourage Christians to tithe?

... will raise other questions that sooner or later must be settled. Here are the related questions we surfaced in first Hermeneutics of Tithing discussion:

1b. Does the Bible encourage or require tithing?
1c. On what basis do we define the tithe as only 10%?
1d. If we tithe should we do so only with monetary income or with all our increase (e.g., apples from our trees)?

2a. Are Christians obligated to keep OT laws?
2b. Are Christians obligated to abide by OT principles?
2c. Was Abram’s tithe to Melchizedek intended as an example to follow (i.e., a principle) or was it just a unique incident?

3. Does the Bible (or NT) teach a greater principle [of giving] than tithing?

4. If we tithe, to whom should the tithe go in view of the fact that there is no more Levitical priesthood?

In arriving at these questions we applied 3 hermeneutical principles; in our Polishing Our Hermeneutical Glasses text, these principles are numbers 10, 11 and 14:

10. Build doctrine in the light of Progressive Revelation.
11. Interpret Scripture in its linguistic, thematic and cultural Context.
14. Build doctrine by Beginning With An Explicit Text.

We quickly discovered that the explicit commands to tithe (Hermeneutical Principle #14) are all in the OT, and given in the context (HP #11) of the Levitical priesthood and the agrarian Temple culture. We discovered that there were 3 distinct tithes mandated by the law: 1 to the Levites (Num 18.24-26), 1 to be consumed with family and friends at religious festivals (Deu 14.22,23) and 1 to be given to the poor (Deu 14.28,29). The 3 tithes together amounted to roughly 24% of a person’s increase.

Matt, Kaj and I also discovered that the context (HP #11) of Mat 23.23 was not instruction on tithing, but rather a rebuke to the Pharisees for their lack of justice, mercy and faith. This passage contains no explicit (HP #14) indication that non-Jews should take the laws of tithing upon themselves. In fact, Matt told us at the outset that there is no explicit scripture (HP #14) teaching Christians to tithe.

Kaj, however, underscored the biblical principle of Progressive Revelation (HP #10) for us by insisting that we must take the whole Bible into account and not base our teaching on the NT alone. Kaj is absolutely right: we must neither teach a NT passage without reference to the OT foundation, nor teach an OT passage without reference to the NT fulfillment!

As we began to look for bedrock on the tithing question, we did find an explicit text (HP #14) teaching us to give: Luke 6.38. The implicit teaching of this verse is that we should give generously. Kaj appropriately cautioned us regarding the abuse of this text by Prosperity teachers.

We were just about to nail the tithing question to the wall when Roderick looked at his watch and realized he had to leave for an appointment.

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 3:20 PM