The Pantheon of Saints

July 20, 2007, 9:30 am; posted by
Filed under Articles, David  | 1 Comment

Perhaps I’m a bit prickly but I can live with that. After all, I’m 46 years old, I’ve lived probably a good two-thirds of my life, and time is too short to mince words. So I’ll just ask the question and get it over with: am I the only one who gets annoyed when people throw the title “saint” around? You know what I mean — Saint Ambrose, Saint Francis, Saint Patrick. What exactly are we talking about?

Vine’s Concise Dictionary of the Bible defines “saint,” in its entirety, as: hagios (40), used as a noun in the singular in Phil. 4:21, where pas (“every”) is used with it. In the plural as used of believers, it designates all such, and is not applied merely to persons of exceptional holiness, or to those who, having died, were characterized by certain acts of “saintliness.” See especially 2 Thess. 1:10, where “His saints” are also described as “them that believed,” i.e., the whole number of the redeemed.

The Bible defines saints as believers. That’s pretty simple. It’s talking about you and me.

If the word in the Bible simply refers to us, the believers, the whole company of the redeemed, then why does Christendom have these super-sized idols we call saints? Where did the concept come from, to take men after their death and elevate them to the status of demi-gods, worshiped and venerated by the masses? Ah, it hearkens back (again) to that dark time when paganism began to creep into the church in 4th Century Rome.

Ever heard of emperor worship? The Romans had a temple called the Pantheon, containing all the gods of the state. Any Caesar could ascend to the Pantheon after death if he was found worthy. If he made it, he entered a vast consortium of gods and idols, any of whom the citizens of Rome could beseech by prayer and supplication, for benefits and blessings. They weren’t wholly divine but they weren’t quite human either. Half-gods perhaps, the perfect vehicle for the church to adopt as a model, to multiply the idolatrous options offered to the illiterate pagan populace and slowly supplant the true saints of the early church.

After all, even with their pagan leanings, how could they allow Christians to drink and brawl in the streets in the name of Jove or Dionysus? So let them drink and brawl to the Christian saints! Have you ever seen Public Square in Watertown, NY, at closing time on St. Patrick’s Day, the drunken celebrants flooding into the streets? The 1976 St. Patrick’s Day brawl was what led my hometown’s police to begin carrying pepper spray. Patrick would be appalled!

In the same way, we couldn’t have Christians asking Ceres or Athena for wisdom or help with a good harvest. So let them pray to the Christian saints! And so we have developed our own Pantheon, populated with gross distortions of truly godly men and women, who served their Savior well, only to be used after death by unscrupulous leaders to ensnare the Christian world in idolatry.

If you use the word “saint” around me, don’t be put off if I think you are referring to me — or you.


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