A Selection of Post-Tithe Quotes: Late 1900s

Jerry Horner (Southern Baptist; 1972)

“Exegetically and thus dogmatically the New Testament does not recognize tithing as a regulation in the new covenant.” 183

Jerry Horner, “The Christian and the Tithe,” in Resource Unlimited,

ed. William L. Hendricks (Nashville: Stewardship Commission

of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1972), 183.

Richard B. Cunningham (Southern Baptist; 1979)

Richard Cunningham was a SBC seminary professor of Christian philosophy.

“The problem is that the New Testament nowhere contains a specific commandment that the Christian should tithe. The tithe is mentioned only three times in the New Testament.”

He also said that “in each case the allusion to the tithe is merely incidental to another point being made.”

“If that were the clear standard of giving in the New Testament church, it would have been useful to appeal to the tithe in the major giving passages in the New Testament. But in those passages … there is not the slightest hint of the tithe.”

Richard B. Cunningham, Creative Stewardship, Creative Leadership Series,

ed. Lyle E. Schaller (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 101.

Garry Friesen (1980)

“Christians are not under obligation to practice tithing.”

Garry Friesen, with J. Robin Maxson, Decision Making & the Will of God:

A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View, Critical Concern

(Portland: Multnomah, 1980), 357.

James Montgomery Boice (1986)

“Sometimes in question-and-answer periods I am asked whether Christians today are obliged to tithe. I suspect the questioner wants to know how little he must give to Christian causes and how much he can keep for himself. I reply with what I believe to be a proper statement of the case, namely, that the tithe was an Old Testament regulation designed for the support of a particular class of people. It was not carried over into the New Testament. Nowhere in the New Testament are believers instructed to give a specific tenth or any other proportion of their income to Christian projects.”

James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: Two Volumes

Complete in One Edition (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1986), 2:255.

Paul Fink (1982)

“It is interesting to note that tithes are never mentioned in the New Testament. … Nowhere in the New Testament is it suggested that the believer is to give 10 percent of his income … The storehouse, contrary to much popular preaching on the subject, is not the local church.”

Paul Fink, “Malachi,” in Liberty Bible Commentary: Old Testament,

ed. Jerry Falwell (Lynchburg, VA: The Old-Time Gospel Hour, 1982), 1859.

J. Vernon McGee (1991)

“We are to give, but on a different basis. The church is not under the tithe

system as a legal system. That does not mean that some people couldn’t give a tenth to the Lord—that may be the way the Lord would lead them to give.”

J. Vernon McGee, Malachi, Thru the Bible (Nashville: Nelson, 1991), 81.