In the Protestant tradition, the word saints (ordinarily in this plural form) has typically referred to living believers in Christ – Church members, all the baptized – usually without any implication about their individual degree of virtue or holiness. This broad usage has roots in Saint Paul’s New Testament letters to the young churches. There he often called communities of his letter-receivers saints, never addressing them in the singular. This use of the word saints fell out of custom a few centuries after Paul lived and wrote, and the word came to be applied to deceased people renowned for their holiness. When in the sixteenth century Martin Luther, a Scripture scholar and admirer of Paul, founded the Christian church that bears his name, he retrieved Paul’s customary usage. Nowadays, following these leads, Church discourse that refers to the living as saints tends to happen much more in the Protestant tradition than the Catholic.
Many Protestant Christians both officially and unofficially use the terms as Catholics do, to refer with respect to those who have died and enjoy heavenly bliss. However, the Protestant tradition generally has given far less attention to the saints in heaven than has the Catholic, owing largely to the Protestant’s strong sense of God’s grace that saves through Christ alone and to a corresponding downplaying of human cooperation with grace.
Orthodox Christians would use the term in a way similar to most Catholics, meaning primarily those individual holy ones now in heaven, including not only those known just to God but also those titled saint by the Church. These designated individuals are assigned dates for each one’s own saint’s day, but for the Orthodox, there is no method as developed or detailed for naming saints as the one Catholics use.
