ABSTRACT
The main idea of this chapter stems from a grammatical peculiarity of ‘being a saint’ in the Christian context, which can be described as follows: the term ‘saint’ seems to be ascribable only to others but not to oneself. To appreciate the nature of the problem the author have described in the introduction it is important to get a feel for the different meanings that ‘saint’ can have in Christianity and see for which of those the problem is relevant. The Lutheran-episodic conception of sainthood which the author suggests instead of the strong realist metaphysics of sainthood can live with the broader, inclusive sense of ‘saint’ which stems from early Christian usage, according to which all Christians are saints. The fact that everybody, even those individuals who do the most saintly acts, has defects and weaknesses, should always guide use of the term ‘saint’.
