Aren’t We All ‘Saints’?
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. For Protestants, our belief in the communion of saints can be a source of disagreement on multiple points: for example, the saints’ ability to hear our prayers, their power to intercede for us before God, and the devotions that we practice in their honor. But perhaps the most basic question they have is why we single out the saints in heaven at all. Many Protestants say there’s nothing really special about them, because the Bible says that all Christians are saints.
For example, in Colossians 1:1-2, St. Paul says,
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father (emphasis added).
This does seem pretty convincing. Why do Catholics refer to only canonized saints in heaven as saints when Paul seems to refer to the Colossian Christians that way?
Revelation 5:8 adds,
And when [the Lamb, Jesus Christ] had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
Here we have “the twenty-four elders,” representing the people of God from both Old and New Covenants (twelve patriarchs plus twelve apostles equals “twenty-four elders”), receiving and communicating “the prayers of the saints” ascending from earth as incense. So again, we have Christians on this side of the veil referred to as “saints.”
Some Catholics will argue that the term saints is being used in the sense of an aspiration. Paul wills the Colossians to be saints, so he refers to them here in accordance with their ultimate calling rather than their present state. I have never found that line of reasoning to be compelling. It doesn’t seem to work for either text, especially Revelation 5:8.
But even more importantly, that doesn’t seem to jibe with Church teaching.
So what gives?
