In the New Testament, every ordinary Christian was called a saint
Today a saint means an exceptional figure, formally recognised after a lengthy process. The earliest Christian letters used the word very differently. Paul addressed whole congregations as 'the saints', meaning every believer set apart for God, and the only singular use in the New Testament is distributive: 'every saint'. The elite sense came much later.
English saint comes from Latin sanctus, holy or consecrated, passing through Old French seint. Sanctus began as a technical term in Roman religion. An older English synonym, hallow, from Old English halig, survives in Allhallowtide, the season that includes All Hallows' Eve, better known as Halloween. The Greek counterpart hagios appears 235 times in the New Testament; the King James Version renders it as 'holy' 191 times and as 'saints' 61 times.
Paul's usage is plainly collective. In 1 Corinthians he equates 'the saints' with 'you', the readers, and he opens letters to Rome, Corinth and Philippi by greeting the saints there. Collections for the poor in Jerusalem are described as aid 'for the saints'. Hebrews, Jude and Revelation use the term similarly, while 1 Peter talks at length about holiness without adopting Paul's label. In the Hebrew Bible, the word usually translates qadosh, meaning set apart, and there is no fixed category of individual saints.
Later churches built formal systems on top of that foundation. Catholics canonise; the Eastern Orthodox speak of glorification; Lutherans and Anglicans honour saints in their calendars. Some nonconformist groups, including the Plymouth Brethren, keep the Pauline sense and call any devout Christian a saint.
Historians of religion now apply the word far beyond Christianity, to the Hindu rishi, the Jewish tzadik, the Islamic wali, the Taoist immortal and the Buddhist arhat or bodhisattva. John A. Coleman of the Graduate Theological Union identified shared traits: working wonders, rejecting material comfort and enjoying a revealing closeness to the holy. The anthropologist Lawrence Babb, writing about the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba, called such figures focal points of spiritual force-fields who transform the inner lives of those around them. Some saints gain their status by official declaration, others through popular acclaim as folk saints.
Source: Saint
