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.
