Saints, Saints, and More Saints!
What the Saints can teach us about our walk with Christ
As a still evangelical, if you had asked me about saints, my reply would have been that, of course, all of us who have trusted Christ for our salvation are saints. The Bible says so!
In Colossians 1:1-2, St. Paul writes, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae.” St. Paul seems to use this description quite a bit in his writings about the churches. So it’s clear, right?
The Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch offers a slightly more qualifying definition: “Syriac Orthodox saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives and God did miracles through them. Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.1”
So it’s not necessarily everyone who was a baptized Christian, but here men and women are in view who truly lived their lives for Christ. The church remembers them with specially designated feast days in the course of the liturgical year. Typically, the date of their repose (attention, evangelical readers: this is Orthodox speak for “death") is what is celebrated.
However, it is important to understand that all baptized Christians are able to become saints recognized by the church. The men and women considered saints of the church yielded their lives to Christ. Many of them were brutally martyred for their faith.
Syriac Orthodox believers direct prayers to the saints, but never with an understanding that the saints deliver a requested outcome themselves but rather that they plead for us before Christ much like a friend still alive with us here on earth would pray for a prayer need we have mentioned.
His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, the late patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, a sister church to the Syriac Orthodox Church in the Oriental Orthodox group of churches, wrote about this in his book Intercession of the Saints.2 Here is a rather long quote from his book (bold italic highlights mine):
Our Church believes in the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the Angels and the Saints. Those who don't share our view regarding the intercession of the saints, usually cite 1Jn 2:1: "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous". They also cite St. Paul: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." (1Ti 2:5)
In support of this important dogma, our church emphasizes the following :
1) There is a major and essential difference between the Advocacy of our Lord and that of the Saints: the Advocacy of Christ is a propitiatory one...
This means that our Lord is our advocate when we sin having made Himself the propitiation of our sins, who paid the wages of sin on our behalf. Christ's advocacy with the Father is based on the fact that He has carried -instead of us- the iniquity of us all (Is 53:6).
In this capacity He stands as a mediator between God and men. As a matter of fact, He is the only mediator between God and men; having satisfied the Divine justice required by the Father, and granting men the forgiveness of their sins by dying on their behalf as a propitiation for their sins.
This is the meaning of the words of St. John the Apostle for he says: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world". (1Jn 2:1,2)
This clearly exemplifies the propitiatory nature of Christ's advocacy. It is an advocacy on behalf of a sinful man; "if any man sin". A sinful man needs a propitiation. And the only One who offered this propitiation is Jesus Christ the righteous. Only he can be our advocate, through the blood He shed on our behalf.
The same intent appears in St. Paul's designation of the Lord Christ as the only mediator between God and men: "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself a ransom for all" (1Ti 2:5). He mediates being the Redeemer who gave Himself and paid the wages of sin on our behalf.
No one would argue this unique role of the Lord Christ as sole advocate of man-kind. Intercession of the Saints on behalf of men has nothing to do with propitiation and redemption. It is intercession on our behalf before Christ.
2) Intercession of the Saints is merely a prayer on our behalf, it is a supplicatory intercession far removed from Christ's propitiatory advocacy.
The Bible supports this kind of intercession: "pray one for another" (James 5:16). Even the Saints requested others to pray for them. St. Paul asks the Thessalonians: "pray for us" (2Thes 3:1). The same he asks of the Hebrews (Heb 13:18), and of the Ephesians "Praying always with all prayer and supplication..for all the saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me" (Eph 6:18). Similar requests for prayer are innumerable in the Bible. Now, if the Saints request our prayers, shouldn't we request theirs ?
And if we ask others to pray for us who are still striving, in this life and are "subject to like passions as we are", shouldn't we rather ask for the prayers of those who finished their course and are living in Paradise with Christ?
Have they lost their favor after departing from earth to Paradise? or is it only lawful to ask for their prayers here on earth but not where thy are so close to Christ in Paradise?
And if we request men to pray for us, shouldn't we rather ask the Angels to pray for us?
Now that this is settled, why should we study the lives of the saints?
I’ll be honest. When I first studied Orthodoxy, this was a tough one for me. Some of the hagiography seems very far-flung in its claims for that particular saint.
However, the longer I studied the lives of the saints, the more I realized just how much they have to offer those of us who still hope to become saints by yielding our lives fully to Christ. There are incredible riches to be mined from how these godly men and women lived their lives for Christ, often in incredibly adversarial situations and under fear for their lives.
A great place to start reading about the Syriac Orthodox saints is in the Facebook group Syriac Orthodox Church Theology. Ranya Kücükkaplan, whom I had the wonderful privilege of spending an entire afternoon with on one of my last visits to Germany, hosts this group and faithfully documents the Syriac saints in both English and German. Here is an example of the recent feast day of Mor Had Bschabo.
Just reading the stories of the saints are a regular motivator for me to search my heart and see whether I am yielding to Christ in the way these brave and fearless defender of the faith lived.
Where available, read what the saints wrote. Internalize it. Allow it to teach you and shape you. Thank God for the example of their lives committed to their Lord. Below is St. Stephen, the first deacon. He was martyred in the first century, and his death, where he is recorded glorifying God, is found in the pages of the New Testament book of Acts.
Don’t stop with the Syriac Orthodox saints. While they are the ones our Syriac Orthodox Church recognizes, the examples of the lives of saints from other Orthodox faith traditions can build us up in our spiritual walk and teach us eternal truths.
And finally, pray to the saints to ask our Lord to grant your prayer request. And no, still no worship involved with our saints. It’s simply an archaic use of the word. You can read all about it here: https://www.etymonline.com/word/pray.
P. S. After reading the above, an evangelical friend asked me, “A definition of “saint” more accurate than the Bible?” Here is my reply:
Orthodox are not inerrantists in the sense that evangelicals are.
We faithfully read the Scriptures. Our liturgies are full of Scripture.
And yet, we don’t cling to the same need to only see the Christian faith through the angle of the written word.
To give you an example, the Eastern Orthodox use the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. You’d think that as someone who studied OT for four years, I’d know more. I was floored by just HOW different it is from the Masoretic (much later, post-Christ) text that makes up Protestant Bibles.
In the Syriac Orthodox Church, we have the Peshitta. This is based on an Aramaic text that in parts appears to predate the extant Greek manuscripts.
So which version can I ascribe inerrancy to? Were the early Christian communities in Antioch (Acts 11:26), from where the Syriac Orthodox Church originates, less faithful? Less engaged?
In Orthodoxy, we always measure Scripture against the millenia-old voice of the apostolic Christian tradition that was faithfully brought forward. It NEVER conflicts with Scripture.
Just remember that you have most likely been taught a certain perspective all your life. You probably have never even allowed yourself to go beyond that narrow view.
When I first investigated Orthodoxy, I, e.g., realized very quickly that the Church Fathers readings I did in seminary were without exclusion narrowed for us to support a Protestant narrative. It was only when I read again taking that constraint off that I saw that Christians have worshipped as the Orthodox churches do today since right after Christ. Certainly, traditions evolved on top of that over the centuries, but they do not conflict with Christian teaching.
Here is just one of many example of extra-biblical texts that were written in the early centuries. The Didache (or Teaching of the 12 Apostles) was written somewhere between A. D. 50-120. Here is one translation: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm.
So back to the original comment. Yes, St. Paul calls us all saints. We are. There are those, however, who lived truly holy lives. These are the saints we venerate (give honor to), not worship. And we believe they are alive with Christ and have His ear, which is why we ask them to also put a good word in for us. EXACTLY as I might ask you to pray for my children and grandchildren to follow Christ, so I ask a saint.
Love you, Elke
P. S. We also believe in guardian angels. That’s for another day.
Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, Dicoese of the Western U.S., https://www.soc-wus.org/ourchurch/lifeofsaints.html.
H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Intercession of the Saints, https://www.stmark.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/11CH4B-intercession.pdf.