The tithe

by Elmer Bryan Stewart

But it is to be noted that only Justin Martyr and Tertullian seem to endorse a hit and miss plan of giving. With these exceptions, the Fathers agree that the laborers in the kingdom of Christ take the place of the ministers of the Mosaic period, and deserve to be as well supported, according to the teaching of Christ in Matt. 10:10 and Luke 10:7, enforced by that of Paul in I Cor. 9:7-11 and I Tim. 5:18. And here it may be said in passing, that Paul justifies his plea for support in the work of the Gospel by—“Saith not the law the same also?” If the law confirms the justice of the laborer’s claim under the Gospel, is it such a perversion of the spirit of the Gospel to urge that one do not fall short of a plain requirement of that same law? This identification of the teachers of both dispensations and of the method of their support is not a later growth, as the Smith and Cheetham’s writer would have us believe, but is found in the very earliest writings. It is quite likely that different practices prevailed at different times and in different places in the Church. But it is to be borne in mind that with the two exceptions named, the testimony is for meeting God’s requirement, whether it be that the requirement was considered to be the whole or the tithe, and that there is no approval given to the do-as-you-please plan in matters of conduct.

Here I think it in place to repeat some things said in Tithe Conferences at Winona and elsewhere during the past year in regard to one of the most persistent and misguided of all the objections with which we are confronted. It is urged that the New Testament bases all action on love and that one must give according to his love and that this is the only Christian standard of life and service. This is confusion much confounded. It is a fixed principle of ethics that men cannot be a law to themselves and civilization be preserved and conduct properly regulated. Though good men may fail to see it, this method of giving according to the measure of one’s love is, at the bottom, anarchy pure and simple. Every man is left to determine what he shall do according to the impulse of the moment and without any regard to a fixed standard of right. Such a principle cannot be tolerated in social life. There is a standard of law which makes the right for one the right for all and to set this aside in any case is to invite trouble. In all human conduct, a fixed standard, apart from men, must be the basis of right. It must be invariable and must obtain in one life as much as in another. Hence this high-sounding plea for love as the basis of all action is pure anarchy in Christian guise. Lawless grace is as loveless as lawless humanity. License claimed on account of standing under grace, though put on a heavenly plane, is hell-born just the same. License means anarchy, and anarchy is devilish though concerned with the holiest of occupations. To make love a standard of action is to confuse a motive and a standard. Love is variable, not the same in any two individuals, and not the same in any individual at different times.

Has love no place in God’s scheme? Certainly it has, and a very large place at that. God’s plan does not limit love in its maximum which is all “that thou hast.” But what we contend is that God does have a minimum standard below which one cannot fall and claim to have the love of Christ constraining him. Love fulfills law, doesn’t abrogate it as so many seem to think. The law says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Love says, I will make that day and every day holy unto the Lord, but does not say, I will do away with the law altogether as to that which God has made the minimum requirement of the race. Love may go beyond the law’s requirement, but will not fall below it. Love does not and cannot repeal law, but obeys it and furnishes the only true motive to obedience. Grace alters and exalts the motive but cannot free from the obligations of law.

A little clear thinking at this point would do much to set many people right on this question and on many other questions of Christian life. The large amount of Pharisaical floundering and pietistic mouthing with which the Church is persecuted on this behalf is not creditable to our intelligence or to our Christianity. So simple and fundamental is this point both from the standpoint of ethics and of religion that it seems strange that sane men should ever call it in question. But men were troubled with it when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans and are still troubled with it and strangest of all quote Paul’s words which were written to set people straight on this matter as the justification of the very thing he was trying to correct. To me this is one of the most peculiar perversions of Scripture which has ever arisen in the history of the Church. That the epistle to the Romans which has for its key word righteousness (which I think means rightness according to God’s standard and which can have no other satisfactory meaning), should be taken as the authority for Antinomianism which practically annihilates law is certainly a singular proof of the fact that some people have the logical faculty in a very rudimentary state. It seems to me that we ought to be able to see that if God’s standard of right is abrogated, then nothing can control a man’s life but his own promptings. What is a law but God’s standard of right in respect to that particular line of conduct to which it applies? What is the abrogation of law but the doing away with God’s standard and the substitution of a human standard? We have become so afraid of the charge of legalism that we have swung far to the side of anarchy, and, as between the two, legalism is the least to be feared, as bad as it is. Plain speech is needed for we must not palliate the consequences of such teaching. Paul meant well as a persecutor, but Paul the preacher greatly deplored his course of action in such a rôle. Men may think they are doing God and humanity service by such advocacy, but to me it is the devil’s work and makes for lawlessness which is sin and which when finished brings forth death. Lawlessness abounds in teaching of school and Church and is it any wonder that we stand horrified at some of its outbreaks in our very midst? Herein I find a most urgent call to advocate the right as God has indicated it in respect to giving as well as to any other of the lines of conduct which go to make up a well-rounded life.

Giving is not left to the emotions of men, no matter how pure and holy they may seem to be. Giving is to be according to God’s measure or requirement. To this it seems we ought all to agree. Has God a measure? If so, what is it and how does it operate? Some of us think that He has and that it is fixed and invariable, the same always and for all. Why should he not have? Honest people of business ability do not sell wheat by whim, potatoes for appearance sake, or calico by hysterics. Produce is measured by well-defined standards and disposed of in due regard to and careful consideration of the principles of economic distribution. Why be so careless in respect to moral conduct? Ethical principles ought to be, and I believe are more clearly defined than are economic principles. What is the rule, what the standard, are the first questions concerning any moral act. When this is known the character of the act is easily determined. Every grace or fruit of the spirit is to be tested by this vital inquiry. Faith, the first-fruit, has a unit of measure. Belief unto salvation is the minimum of faith. Beyond that faith may reach to heights that seem to have no limit. But it must measure up to that minimum, or fail to merit the name of faith. Love the final-fruit, as we sometimes say, has its unit, namely, the gift of self. No gift without the giver, no love without the lover. These minimum requirements are agreed upon by all teachers of the gospel of redemption from sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. No one supposes for a moment that such teaching involves the idea that faith and love shall never go beyond this minimum. They must go on to perfection.

This brings us to answer that provoking misrepresentation of the position of tithers which claims that men ought to give more than the tithe and that love to Christ should lead to the consecration of all to Him. I do not know of any tither who feels that the tenth is all that he ought to give. Most pastors know that if extra money is wanted, the tithers are not the last to respond. Further, I have never heard such doctrine advocated by any tither. We persistently say that we are dealing with the minimum, not with the maximum, not with the outgoings of hearts full of love to Christ, but with those who are robbing God of even His minimum and are thus guilty of the awful crime of covetousness, which the New Testament places among the vilest of crimes and says that it will shut out of the kingdom. The fifth chapter of I Corinthians clearly teaches that the covetous brother is to be shut out of the fellowship of Christians, even in this life. How does the treatment of the rich man by many churches and communities square with this plain teaching? The early Fathers were very faithful in teaching concerning the crime of covetousness, following in the footsteps of the Apostles and of Christ Himself. How about the minister who considers himself above the business of mentioning money matters to the congregation? This rank Phariseeism needs to be driven out of the minds of ministers and theological teachers who train ministers. If they spoke on this subject as often as Christ did, they would need to preach on it about once a month. Mr. Kane’s experience wherein after three heroic efforts, he only succeeded in finding theological professors and students in about half the seminaries in this country and Canada who were willing to receive literature which he offered to furnish gratis, speaks of an awful perversion of Scripture teaching on this subject and a failure to grasp the vital questions of Christian life which it touches. Is it any wonder that there is a constant “drain of the treasury” as Augustine said? Wrestle with it as we may, the consecrate-all-to-the-Lord and all such plans, have proved a dismal failure in respect to bringing “meat” into God’s house, and the crying need of the hour is money to send workers into all the world to preach the gospel. Whatever be your scheme for getting the money, you know, brother pastor and fellow-workers, that the great hindrance to enlargement of the Church’s work is money to meet necessary expenditures. Some one always bobs up with the mystical dictum that it is prayer, or consecration, or something to that effect. But that is only beating the Devil around the bush. For the promised result of the prayer, or the consecration, or whatever one may suggest, is that money will be forthcoming. So after all it is money that must be gotten, by whatsoever means one may employ.

The giving of all to the Lord is the only New Testament method which is offered us as an alternative. I am free to say that it has failed to meet the case not only in our age, and in the age of the Fathers who rang the changes on it, but I am persuaded also that it did not meet the case in the days of the Apostles. It must always be remembered that it was voluntary, as Peter said to Ananias, and though voluntary, it did not fail to present difficulties very early in the history of the Church, as the sixth chapter of Acts shows. Again it should be remembered that the very fact that Paul was instructed to call for a collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem proves two things at least. That the needs of the Church were not met by this voluntary communism, and that this communism had not been adopted elsewhere to any great extent, else the appeal to people to lay aside for this free-will offering as God had prospered them would have been a piece of pious nonsense.

The Jewish Encyclopedia (Vol. III., p. 668) gives an interesting bit of evidence as to the effect of this movement. We read that “against the tendency prevailing in Essene and Christian circles to sell all one had and ‘give to the poor’ in order to have ‘treasure in heaven’ (Matt. 19:21), the rabbis at the Synod in Usha ordained that ‘no one should give away more than the fifth of his fortune lest from independence he may lapse into a state of dependence’” (Ket. 50 a). While the evil effect of anything Christian is apt to be overstated by these Jewish writers, still may it not be that here we have proof that communism, tried under the most favorable circumstances, as it certainly was under the early Church management, fails to meet the case, and that Christ’s saying, “The poor always ye have with you,” was still true and even more emphasized under this method of social life? The fact seems to stand out even on the pages of the book of Acts with special emphasis that such a method, with the very best management, does not take away the problem of the dependent, but really intensifies it.

The Apostle Paul seems to have had to deal with this tendency toward abuse of charity and in doing so laid down some very fundamental propositions to which the Church ought always to give heed. “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” II Thess. 3:10-12. “If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” I Tim. 5:8. These positive teachings certainly argue that Paul did not approve of the communistic plan, for how could one eat his own bread or provide for his own household, if he had put all into the common fund? In short, Paul, as the great organizer of the Church, does not give a single hint that he approved of such a method. All his statements are emphatic on the other side. Even his own custom of working for his living argues his disapproval of the communistic idea. This should be borne in mind by those who are so sure that Christian Socialism as they choose to call it, will solve all the problems respecting the poor. Personally, I believe that Paul’s method is the better one and will come nearer than any other to the solution.

The question is often asked, why does not the New Testament say more about the tithe, if it is still the universal law? The answer to this has usually been, that all the peoples to whom the apostles preached had been accustomed to give at least a tenth for religious purposes and they found no particular need to lay emphasis upon what was a universal practice. Also that the enthusiastic support through voluntary communism and other large free-will offerings made it unnecessary for them to dwell upon it. These answers have weight and might be counted sufficient, if it were not that they seem to assume that the New Testament is silent on this great question. Attention has been called to Christ’s commendation of the tithing principle and to Paul’s appeal to the law. But it seems to me that not enough is made of the treatment of this subject in the one book in which we would naturally expect it, that is, in the book of Hebrews. The writer was trying to convince these Hebrews of the incomparably superior character of Christ and His priesthood to that to which they were so attached. We would naturally suppose that here, if anywhere, we would have some discussion of the tribute to this great High Priest and that is just what we have in the seventh chapter.