In the New Testament, the term saint in the King James Bible means a "holy one," meaning one set-apart or separated from the natural world as a living sacrifice per Romans 12:1, which I will discuss in more detail below. So a saint and the path of sainthood is literally one who denies the natural world and their natural drives and instincts and basically rejects biological life for a saintly life of holiness and/or piety. I will go into more detail below, but in the New Testament, this world of biological life is controlled by Satan, demons, and a literal Sin virus that Paul believes is controlling his body and infecting all humanity. This is why one sacrifices their life to holiness, separating oneself from their biological drives and human desires for property, wealth, and status which are drives allegedly influenced by a Sin-force. This is why their are so many verses on denying one's self (or selfhood) for sainthood and escaping the natural world via voluntary martyrdom. The term martyr comes from the Greek word for witness. For the first Christians, the path of sainthood was both a path of literal self-denial and also a way to describe their fellow believers who were persecuted by the Roman government in the first century; to be a saint was to accept the path that they might be called upon to deny their professed faith in Jesus as Lord by instead professing Caesar is Lord, which in that time and context, refusal to do so (i.e. swearing allegiance to Lord Caesar instead of Lord Jesus) meant risking death. Martyrdom was a real possibility for early Christians. They were willing to die because they saw this world as being literally controlled by Satan, Demons, and Sin. So they really believed this mortal world of "fallen materiality" was soon going to end (be destroyed) and a new celestial or Platonic realm (of pure immaterial Forms) would replace the "fallen" world of flesh and matter. So denying one's own life, one's desires and passions which was seen as hostile to the Platonic realm of the Spirit per Galatians 5:17, was to be holy. Because of this mentality of hostility to life in the body, seeking death in first century Rome through voluntary martyrdom was not seen as a loss, for to die was gain. For this world was evil, corrupt, "bad," and pious sainthood and martyrdom was an escape from this contaminated world. So seeking sainthood meant seeking to be like an immaterial holy deity and holy angels who reside in a non-fleshly Platonic realm. This is why there are so many New Testament verses that describes holiness as escaping from the material world controlled by evil forces.
The word "saint" itself means to basically be called out/seperated ones (holier-ones) by seeking the ideal of holiness and pious perfection separated from "the world."
To be a saint means to be separated from things and persons deemed unholy; with the unholy, from a biblical perspective, basically being the natural world; which is to be rejected and separated from God's holy tribe or holy people. For example, these verses cover this emphasis on being holy (emphasis added):
1 Samuel 2:2: "There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God"
Revelation 15:4: "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy"
Leviticus 20:7: "Be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy"
1 Peter 1:15-16: "But be holy in all you do, just as God, the One who called you, is holy"
1 Corinthians 3:17: "For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple
Obviously, modern day saints Protestantism and Catholicism, are not like the New Testament saints risking their life as potential martyrs by first century "Caesarean" Rome. So modern day saints (holy ones), including most mainstream Christians, have adapted to a post-Caesar world where one is not being called on to declare Caesar is Lord in a first century Roman court. So today's Paganized Christianity has invented a post New Testament piety that expands upon Pauline ideology but removes the emphasis on martyrdom, with instead a more Augustinian mentality of piety through a further despising of the body.
Sin is a Space Alien!
The following website explains succinctly the Glad Tidings of Paul which is really about the good news of, through the Pauline cult, being able to escape the body and the space alien called Sin permanently dwelling in our mortal bodies (as long we are alive). In other words, an actual invasion of the body snatchers! The way Paul’s god removes the enslavement to this alien force called Sin is by killing his Son as a blood sacrifice (blood magic!), and then the ghost of the deceased Jewish Rabbi (Christ) then literally spirit possesses the Pauline follower. For details see these articles below:
A Christian congregation, in the original Pauline context, was an actual body of individuals literally spirit possessed and aminated by a deceased Messiah. To understand how the Pauline cult originated, see Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity by Stevan L. Davies. Christianity was originally all about being possessed and animated either by evil space aliens (Sin, demons, etc.) or a good space alien named the Messiah. For example, one alien force (let's call him Mr. Sin) is overcome by another alien force (the ghost of a dead Jewish Rabbi). Here is how the website for Total Life Ministry explains it in theological language (words in bold my own for emphasis):
The seventh chapter of Romans makes it clear that not only have all sinned, but also, all have a principle of sin dwelling within them. This principle of sin is present from conception. It is an inheritance from Adam. It works in the fleshly body and mind (Ephesians 2:3) to bring forth sinful thought, speech, and deeds, and to produce the fruit of sin, which is death. Paul describes it as "a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my [redeemed] mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members" (Romans 7:23 NASV). ... With Paul, they cry out, "Wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:24 NASV).
… A common science fiction theme illustrates the problem of sin dwelling in us. Sin is like an evil alien being that has taken up residence in a human body, working evil and destruction through it. Once the alien enters the person's body, no power can remove it. The alien and the human become one entity whose works are evil. The only remedy is death. Kill the host organism and thus render the invader harmless by removing the body through which it operates.
God never intended for sin to dwell in humans. But Adam opened the door to sin by his choice to disobey God (Romans 5:12,19). Sin entered in and has subsequently been passed down to each generation. …
… Because we deserve death anyhow, God's easiest solution to the problem of sin dwelling in us would be to simply kill off each of us as soon as we first commit sin. This would accomplish two things: (1) justice would be served; (2) the alien principle of sin would be rendered powerless, at least in regards to the potential destruction it would have worked through the now dead individual if he had continued living.
But, God be praised!, this was not the solution He chose. Rather, In His wisdom, according to His purposes, and because of His love, He instead sent His Son, Jesus, to die in our place. … Thus we are justified in God's sight through the blood of His Son, … But the alien doesn't go away; it still lives in us. Sin still dwells in our bodies. … Remember, the alien can only be rendered powerless by killing the body it works through. We will not be rid of the principle of sin dwelling in our members until either our earthly body dies and goes into the grave, or Jesus returns and changes our mortal body "into conformity with the body of His glory" (Philippians 3:20-21). …
So what do we do while we still dwell in our mortal bodies? … He pronounces: "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3 KJV). No matter that we still live in a body infected with sin. God says that we were "in Christ" when he hung on the cross and died. … Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death....we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death..." (Rom 6:3-5 NASV). ….If I am dead, it follows that the alien, i.e., the principle of sin, cannot work through me. I am not available to be used by it, and therefore, the alien's power--its ability to stir up lusts and passions within--is broken. Paul says we were crucified in Christ for this purpose, "that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin." (Romans 6:6-7 NASV). It was my old self that lived according to the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). But now, in Christ, my old self is dead, and being dead, I am unavailable to sin.
But God did not stop here…. "Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4 NASV). My body has a new occupant, God Himself,...."I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20 NASV).
... Next Paul says, "For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him..." (Romans 6:6 NASV). ….Paul exhorts, "Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11 NASV)....."Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts..." (Romans 6:12 NASV). …."...And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness..." (Romans 6:13 NASV). ...
"...But present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead..." (Romans 6:13 NASV).
… "But present...your members as instruments of righteousness to God" (Romans 6:13 NASV). …. "slaves of righteousness, resulting in sanctification" (Romans 6:19).
Source: http://www.totallifeministries.org/Articles/Sin_In_Us.htm Retrieved 2/15/19
As we can see, the actual Pauline message is a quasi space alien has literally infected us because we inherited Adam's cursed nature making us mortal (after he ate some magic fruit), so that we need to literally die and escape our cursed body and the evil world controlled by the god Satan. I'm sorry but that's just nuts! For Paul, the entire material universe is controlled by Sin, Death, Satan and Demons, based on a fable about a talking snake and magic fruit! And so Life itself is literally cursed and thus it followed that most of tangible life was to be rejected and avoided, which is actually what the pursuit of being a saint (holy one) is based on. Paul believed that the mortal human body was cursed due to it being seeded by the cursed Adam's seed, thus we inherit Adam's curse. So in Paul's mind, one needed to escape one's cursed flesh by being literally seeded (supernaturally inseminated) by his Messiah with the new holy seed (literally sperma) of the Messiah via the "divine spirit" (which in Greek is the word "pneuma," pronounced "nooma"). Through this process of supernatural "gene therapy" (as one biblical scholar puts it), Paul believed one would grew within them a new "spiritual body" like birthing a baby that would grow into an adult. This spiritual body or new pneumatic body (pronounced "noomatic") growing in a person replaced one's "wretched" flesh body. This is why Paul describes his holy ones as the Bride (i.e. brides or fiancé's) of a male Messiah, because they are he believes, both the male and female among his followers, literally supernaturally inseminated by supernatural pneuma (pronounced "nooma") that contains the DNA of the Messiah. As the footnote to John 3:9 in The Passion Translation accurately explains the meaning of "God’s seed" in this verse means: "This is the Greek word for sperma, 'male seed.' See 2 Peter 1:4." See the footnotes for 2 Peter 1:4 in The Passion Translation, to see that to partake of the divine nature in this verse means to literally impart divine DNA, the very nature of God that replaces the nature or DNA of Adam. For example, see Quotes on “From Eternity to Here” by Frank Viola (Ch 5). For Paul, his group of followers were literally birthing in their death as martyrs a new species that would have the same form as the stars in the sky. For the earthly body was wretched and cursed, so Paul believed it had to literally be replaced with a kind of star body growing inside the mortal body and unleashed at death (see 1 Cor. 15). For the human race is doomed in Paul's mind and so he literally believes he is shamanistically channeling the voice of a deceased Jewish Rabbi who is using him to literally replace the human race with a new species called the holy ones (saints).
Paul emphasized the need to escape the body as soon as possible, because only then can one fully become a holy one or purified saint. Paul believed that this future "noomatic"/supernatural body was composed of the same substance (pneuma) that forms the stars in the sky and the bodies of angels, and was not earthly or made of earthly matter. Matter = bad, Sky stuff = good. Thus the actual Pauline message led to crazy lifestyle recommendations like Paul encouraging celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7 and this Pauline ideal being likely later transposed onto Jesus lips in Mathew 12:12. This is why the New Testament is actually against the nuclear family given the Pauline worldview (see Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity by Elizabeth A. Clark). So the New Testament is not about the Good Life and becoming a good person but for Paul his saints are to be living sacrifices, with their very lives devoted to monkish celibate sainthood and martyrdom as their priestly sacrifice; in anticipation of ultimately shedding their wretched earthly bodies to become saints (literally "holy ones," as explained on pages 10-20 of this PDF by Michael Heiser).
Once I learned all of this it completely changed how I felt about seeking to be a "saint" or holy one. For I realized seeking "holiness" or sainthood was all based on the ravings of shamanistic spirit medium who thought the mortal world was ending in his own lifetime. Even the liberal theologian Marcus Borg had to admit that Paul was obviously wrong about this end-times expectation. But the fact is his immanent end-times delusion was intertwined with his message of rejecting bodily life here and now and seeking to escape this life into a floaty holy sky body. For it was all based on the expectation of a soon arriving cosmic sky realm literally floating down from the sky down to earth, which he promised his followers was immanent (coming soon!); so soon in fact that he said that some of those he was writing to who were still alive when it happened would instantly, in a flash, just magically turn into a starry sky body and float up to meet the Messiah in the clouds mid-flight (see Revelation 21: 1-2; 1 Cor. 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4: 17).
What most priestly types do is try to make you sick, then offer their remedy. So Paul had just extended this mental sickness to escaping life itself. Paul acted as a temple priest basically, by offering his saints as living sacrifices on the metaphorical temple altar through their celibate monkish lifestyles and protentional martyrdoms where their spilt blood would be a further imitation of the Suffering Messiah. For more details see:
- The various articles by Paul Middleton on the subject here
The Pauline Attack on the Body as Anti-Life
If the Adam and Eve story is a myth which I think it is, and instead we evolved our human nature and our very instincts (which are what caused us to survive and thrive as a species), which I think is true, then this priestly attack on the body and Nature is a gross error as basically an attack on biological life itself and your embodied existence!
When you think about things from this angle, from the perspective of is it life affirming or life despising, then priestly sainthood has the capacity to have potentially devastating consequences for the human psyche and our attitude toward this world. For such life despising priestly texts are not only irrational and superstitious and potentially harmful, but the core message is essentially anti-human and anti-Life!
So if this is what being a saint means in the New Testament, you can count me out of sainthood; as I have no desire to be a monkish celibate martyr. Keep in mind that biblical scholarship has shown that most of the New Testament is based on the ideas spread by the apostle Paul. For example, the first gospel written, the Gospel of Mark, is considered a Pauline document. In the New Testament, the Pauline term saint means holy one, i.e. "set apart one," meaning one who is "called out" and separated from the natural world, which again at that time in early Christianity, Nature itself was seen as literally controlled by Satan as the literal god of this world.
So the earth is ruled by the Devil and all humans are cursed with the space alien virus Sin living in them and animating them to constantly make mistakes and make Paul's deity angrier and angrier for merely being human; and as humans making inevitable mistakes and errors that this deity allegedly designed humans to make as "fallen" (error prone) beings. If you think about it that is like a scientist programming a robot to make mistakes and then becoming angry at the robot for making those mistakes. Make it make sense.
So because everyone is pre-programmed to piss off Paul's deity as long as they live in the flesh (biology), the solution for Paul was to escape the earth and the body, asap! Again, Paul actually calls his followers living sacrifices as they were to sacrifice their very lives by giving up the pursuit of self-fulfillment, of seeking wealth and a family, for his apocalyptic end-times worldview and doomsday message. Paul's good news or glad tidings had nothing to do with a better world here now (like the Epicurean Garden) or a better future world for human mortals (as the American Deist envisioned), but instead the good news for Paul was that we get to soon die as martyrs to be with his anti-body deity or experience the annihilation of mortal life and the coming government of his deity on to a celestialized earth. Paul's followers were to actually seek an escape from life via celibacy and death through voluntary martyrdom in order to literally imitate Christ; and thus be saved by sharing in the same suffering and death as Jesus suffered. See the scholarship of Paul Middleton for more details. Paul believed the mortal world would soon be destroyed, i.e. annihilated, and only God's celestial government would rule the earth with his Jewish Messiah as the new Emperor of the Earth.
This is why the New Testament never covers democracy, logic, or an objective philosophy of ethics but only divine command theory and the subjective appeal to revelation. There is no talk of long term education, advice on dating, family planning or retirement. Not a lot of fun and playfulness or joy, no joking and laughter either, because these people really did believe the world was ending! Not exactly a fun and jovial bunch but a more scared and paranoid people afraid of their own shadow!
The Stoic philosophers appealed to reason and examples from Nature to build their case for the Good Life. For example, Musonius Rufus appealing to the nature of wolves and bees to make the case for social mutualism, solidarity and community. Instead of a rational pursuit of naturalistic virtue, the whole New Testament is instead based on appeals to spirit possession based revelations, with Paul claiming to hear and dictate the will of the deceased Jesus of Nazareth who is literally spirit possessing Paul. So there are many anti-family passages, again see Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity by Elizabeth A. Clark. So the ideal was set by Paul, who encouraged his followers to be celibate if willing and able, just like him (see 1 Corinthians 7). This Pauline ideal was, again, then later put into the mouth of Jesus who in Mathew's gospel says the ideal is to be a eunuch in Matthew 19:12, which the Complete Jewish Bible translates as, "For there are different reasons why men do not marry — some because they were born without the desire, some because they have been castrated, and some because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever can grasp this, let him do so.” This was interpreted by many early Christians as a call to be celibate; which if you believed the mortal world was soon ending soon, celibacy made some sense. This tradition was so popular in early Christianity that an extrabiblical document called The Acts of Paul and Thecla "portrays women giving up riches and sexual activity to follow the Apostles." Obviously, this was kind of insane and Christianity would have died off like the Shakers if carried on as such. So when Jesus did not fly down soon from the sky as expected, later Christians reinterpreted these ideas and after Paul died, others claiming to be Paul changed the ideal of celibacy to instead the ideal of having one wife, etc.
So this is the actual meaning of a saint in the context of the Pauline corpus in the New Testament itself. So right off the bat, its clear that I have no interest in being a saint, a celibate living sacrifice; and even if I did want to be a Pauline saint, I can't because there is no Roman emperor claiming to be Lord, so I can't be executed by Rome like some of the the first Christians (like Paul). So the concept of being a Pauline saint minus celibacy and martyrdom by ancient Rome, makes sainthood obsolete in my opinion. For, with no ancient Roman emperor or Caesar, there is no way to be martyred for opposing Caesar's imperial cult; no celibacy, no holy ones; no expected Second Coming (due to 2000 years of failure to arrive as expected), no sane reason to practice sainthood!
