Saint
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…
Definition
A saint (Greek hagios, “holy one”) is, in the New Testament’s own usage, anyone united to Christ by faith, not a title reserved for an especially virtuous few. Paul addresses entire congregations, without qualification, as saints (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2; Eph. 1:1), because the word names a status of consecration to God rather than a measure of attained holiness. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox usage later narrowed the term to a formally recognized class of the specially honored dead, a development Reformed theology treats as a departure from Scripture’s own usage.
Confessional Witness
The Second London Baptist Confession does not define “saint” as a separate term; it assumes the New Testament’s usage throughout. Having described the “catholic or universal church” as “the whole number of the elect,” the confession titles its chapter on that church’s shared life, simply, “Of the Communion of Saints”: “All saints that are united to Jesus Christ, their head, by his Spirit and faith… have fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory.”1 This is not a Baptist distinctive. The Westminster Confession states the same doctrine under the same chapter title in nearly identical wording, and both confessions are restating the Apostles’ Creed’s own ancient phrase, “the communion of saints.” On this reading, “saint” names every person united to Christ by faith, not an office or an honor conferred afterward.
Biblical Basis
Paul opens most of his letters by addressing the whole congregation as saints, without singling out an especially devout minority within it: believers “in Rome” are “called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7), the entire Corinthian church is “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Cor. 1:2), and the same address goes to the Ephesian, Philippian, and Colossian churches (Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2). The usage is not confined to epistolary greeting: Ananias objects that Saul “has done to your saints at Jerusalem” (Acts 9:13), and Luke describes the whole Joppa congregation, widows included, gathered around Tabitha’s body as “the saints” (Acts 9:32, 41).
The underlying word, hagios, shares its root with “sanctify” (hagiazo). Louis Berkhof traces both to the Hebrew qadash, “to be holy,” itself “derived from the root qad, which means to cut or to separate,” whose “fundamental idea is that of a position or relationship existing between God and some person or thing,” not an achieved moral state.2 On this usage, a saint is one set apart to God. The New Testament applies that to every believer, not to a rank held by a few within the church.
Historical Development
The New Testament’s usage, every believer a saint, narrowed over the centuries that followed. Veneration that began with the martyrs “soon became the objects of religious veneration,” and by the fourth century this had extended “to include bishops, monks, hermits, confessors, and virgins, as well as a variety of saints, their relics, and their images.”3 Rome eventually formalized the resulting hierarchy of honor: adoration (latria) belongs to God alone, while Mary receives hyperdulia and the saints dulia.3 The result is a distinct, formally recognized class of the dead set apart for veneration, a different thing from Paul’s “saints,” which named every living member of a congregation. See Invocation of Saints for the fuller history of how that veneration developed into direct prayer to the saints, and the Reformed confessional response to it.
Opposing Views
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology apply “saint,” in ordinary usage, to someone formally recognized after death as having lived a life of exceptional holiness. Both traditions honor that class of the dead as models and, in devotion, invoke their prayers, rather than using the word for every believer. Reformed theology judges this an unwarranted narrowing of the New Testament’s own word, and finds a further problem in what grew up around it: “In the practices of Roman Catholicism the communion of saints degenerates into mutual veneration that crowds the Mediator of God and humanity into the background.”3 Invocation of Saints sets out that argument, and Rome’s own case for the practice, in full.
Objections and Responses
If all believers are saints, why does Scripture single out particular Christians for exceptional service or holiness? Paul commends specific believers by name for their labor or example, such as Phoebe (Rom. 16:1-2) and Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25-30), in letters that also address their whole congregations as saints. Commendation for service is a different thing from constituting a separate rank; the same letter that praises Epaphroditus by name is written “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi” (Phil. 1:1).
Doesn’t “saint” in ordinary usage today mean an exceptionally good or canonized person, not just any Christian? That is the later, largely Roman Catholic usage the Historical Development section traces. It is a real development in how the word came to be used, not evidence that Paul’s own usage, addressing entire congregations as saints without qualification, meant something narrower than the New Testament text plainly shows.
Related Doctrines
References
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The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 1, and chap. 27, “Of the Communion of Saints,” para. 1. ↩
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Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 59. ↩
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Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 23, “The Intermediate State.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3