This Sunday we will celebrate All Saints’ Day. Among other things, we will sing that great Ralph Vaughn Williams’ hymn, For All the Saints, and include in our prayers the names of all those loved ones whom we have lost these past few years. Everyone will also be given the opportunity to light a candle for a ‘saint’ dear to you if you so wish during communion.
All of which raises the question: so, who exactly is a ‘saint’ within the meaning of All Saints Day?
According to the New Testament, there is an important and primary sense in which all faithful Christians, both those living and the departed, are ‘saints’ because they share in the life of Christ by virtue of baptism. Thus, the term ‘saint’ is applied to all faithful Christians throughout the Acts of the Apostles (see, e.g., Acts 9:32, 26:10), and Paul routinely addresses the members of the Christian communities that receive his letters (see Rom 1:7, 1 Cor 1:2, 2 Cor 1:1, Eph 1:1, Phil 1:1, Col 1:2) as ‘saints.’ We are ‘saints’ on this view not because of the merits of our behavior, but only because Christ makes it possible for us to be saints by allowing us to share in his life, initially in baptism and then with the nourishment of the Eucharist. We are, in Paul’s language: washed, sanctified, and justified “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11).
As the church evolved throughout history, however, the term ‘saint’ came to have another meaning: referring to “elite” Christians whose lives were distinguished and exemplary because of their self-sacrifice, witness, virtue, or accomplishments. Special recognition was given to the martyrs of the early church. The saints and martyrs were in a sense the heroes of the church.
The medieval church also developed a theological framework for understanding this distinction, one that is still enshrined in official Roman Catholic theology. The Roman Church divides the faithful departed into two categories: the church triumphant – that is, those exemplary Christians (i.e., full-fledged ‘saints’) whose lives were sufficiently holy to warrant immediate entry into heaven; and the church expectant – those departed Christians whose lives were faithful but not yet quite holy enough for heaven, and who reside in an intermediate state of purification called ‘purgatory,’ as they make their way toward heaven.
For this reason, Roman Catholics venerate, and pray to or with ‘saints,’ because they are believed to be in more intimate relationship with Christ, and can intercede on behalf of all Christian pilgrims, both living and dead, who are still moving toward purification. Accordingly, the Roman church has developed an elaborate and complicated process for canonizing those persons to be named saints. For Roman Catholic Christians, saints are more than just witnesses of the faith; they are also protectors and intercessors. Saints' days proliferated in the western church during the Middle Ages. Churches and institutions were named for saints. Many faithful people made pilgrimages to shrines of saints.
The Reformers strenuously objected to this understanding of ‘sainthood,’ believing it to be grounded in an unbiblical theology of ‘works righteousness.’ In Luther’s famous phrase, we are all simultaneously both ‘saints and sinners’; only Christ is purely saintly. It is our faith in what Christ has done on our behalves that saves us; not our works, which inevitably fall short, even the works of heroic Christians. Heroic Christians from the past, for Protestants, have no ‘special status’ in heaven or intercessory power. In keeping with this view, the Reformers also emphatically rejected the idea of ‘purgatory,’ and believe that all faithful Christians enjoy a life in Christ after death without distinction.
So exercised was Luther about this issue that he once preached an All Saints’ Day sermon in which he famously objected to the veneration of departed ‘saints.’ With characteristic directness and hyperbole, he wrote:
“I have previously and often said how the saints should be honored. That is, you must make a distinction between the saints who are dead and those who are yet living, and what you must do for the saints. You must turn away from the dead and honor the living saints. The living saints are your neighbors, the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, poor people; those who have wives and children, who suffer shame, who lie in sins. Turn to them and help them. That is where you are to apply your works. . . . You have God’s command to help the living but He has not commanded you to do anything for the dead. There is no command that you should honor dead saints so . . . let go of that and turn to those whom you know God is pleased that you honor. Don’t we have enough to do pursuing what God has in fact commanded us to do?”
This, of course, slightly overstates the case. Luther was certainly right that we should direct most of our energies to those living who are in need of our help. But that doesn’t mean we can’t from time to time – including on All Saints’ Day – pay honor to the lives of those who have gone before us so that we can learn from them. Thus, despite Luther’s diatribe in this one sermon, Lutheran and Episcopal churches still observe All Saints’ Day and continue to believe that remembering ‘holy lives’ can be helpful in learning what Christian discipleship can look like. Understood in this sense, saints are not superheroes but witnesses of the faith who can teach us about discipleship in different historical and cultural contexts.
In short, then, on Sunday we will honor all the saints, both the dead and the living, as we give thanks for and learn from the myriad, beautiful ways in which flesh-and-blood human beings have lived, and continue to live, into their faith.
