Saint

A saint is a spirit of the dead who loyally serves Yahweh and performs duties analogous to those of certain angels. Like angels, saints have entered into a binding of servitude to Yahweh. Because they are ultimately human in nature, their duties generally involve interactions with other humans, specifically with living Yahwists. It is rare for them to interact with people who do not already follow Yahweh.

In Yahwism

Judaism

In Judaism, the title tzadik, literally meaning "righteous [one]," serves as a rough equivalent to sainthood. Important biblical holy figures, such as the prophets of Yahweh, are called tzadikim, as are some important rabbis and spiritual masters from post-biblical times. The highly influential 12th-century rabbi Maimonides defined a tzadik as "one whose merit surpasses his iniquity." Tzidkat HaTzadik, a Hasidic text, states that a tzadik does not deviate from the letter of the law and almost never sins.

In some parts of the Middle East, Jewish and even Muslim locals have venerated the tombs or holy sites of Jewish tzadikim in a somewhat similar manner to the Christian veneration of saints since early medieval times. Medieval Jews and Muslims of the region agreed that tzadikim had a property called baraka, literally "blessing," which could be transferred to their belongings or tools, locations they stayed, sites at which they performed miracles, or tombs in which their remains were interred. Offerings were left at shrines to the tzadikim, and places or objects influenced by them were said to induce supernatural apparitions such as lights, pleasant smells, and strangely ascending clouds. Jewish sages, such as Ibn Shahin, published hagiographic literature similar to Christian hagiography, detailing the deeds, adventures, and stories of the lives of tzadikim.

Christianity

Saints are very prominent in the apostolic branches of Christianity, such as Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Oriental Orthodoxy. These Christians pray to saints in the belief that they will petition Yahweh on their behalf. In Christianity, saints are those who are with Yahweh in heaven. While the named archangels are generally also referred to as "saints" in these traditions, they are understood to be of a different nature than saints who are spirits of the dead.

Many of the best-known saints are early Christians who died in antiquity. However, sainthood can still be declared posthumously in modern times. Each of the major non-Protestant Churches has its own process to determine the sainthood of a deceased individual, generally involving attestation of the individual's miraculous intercession on behalf of a Christian believer. While many saints are revered by all of the apostolic Churches, there are also many saints who are recognized in, for example, Catholicism but not Orthodoxy. Some saints are much more prominently venerated than others, such as St. Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ.

Saints are commonly portrayed in Christian artwork. Large paintings depicting many saints together line the walls and sometimes even the ceilings of many Catholic and Orthodox churches. Smaller works depicting individual saints, known as icons, are frequently used by Christians as personal devotional items. Miniature portraits of saints in the form of lockets, charms, or molded pendants are worn as amulets of blessing and protection. Physical locations where saints are said to have miraculously appeared often become local holy sites; some are even internationally renowned, attracting Christians from far and wide to visit and pray.

The apostolic Christian practice of venerating saints has been heavily criticized by Protestant Christians, who argue that such devotional acts should belong to Yahweh alone (or Jesus, whom they consider to be the incarnation of Yahweh). While apostolic Christians maintain that veneration is distinct from worship and that the veneration of saints does not constitute worship of beings other than Yahweh, Protestants classify these practices as sinful and idolatrous. On these grounds, some evangelical Protestants have gone as far as to reject that Catholicism and Orthodoxy are Christian at all, calling them polytheistic, pagan, or even Satanic. However, these are generally regarded by third-party religious scholars as heavily biased polemical claims that do not align with the commonly accepted definitions of polytheism, paganism, or Satanism.

Islam

Islam has a well-established saint tradition, which exists in most major forms of Islam but is especially prominent in Sufi mysticism. An Islamic saint is called a walī (plural awliyāʾ), which literally translates to "friend" or "protector." Unlike Christian saints, awliyāʾ are not canonized through any centralized institutional process, but are instead recognized as saints according to their popular reputation for their extreme piety, closeness to Allah (Yahweh), and often attestation of miracles.

Islamic saints are often said to possess baraka, "blessing," a property of holiness and spiritual power that comes from their closeness to Allah (Yahweh). This baraka persists after the death of the saint and can be transferred to their belongings, homes, shrines, remains, tombs, and living descendants. Because of this idea, shrines and tombs of awliyāʾ attract religious pilgrims to pray and seek blessings or healing. Muslims' pilgrimages to these holy sites are known as ziyāra.

As with Christianity, some sects of Islam vehemently oppose saint veneration. Reformist Muslims, including Salafi and Wahhabi Muslims, speak out against devotional practices like seeking intercession or blessings from saints or making pilgrimages to their tombs, for similar reasons to Protestant Christians: they reject the veneration-worship distinction and consider these practices inappropriate or sinful because worship is exclusively reserved for Yahweh.

In Satano-Grigorism

Saints play a very minor role in the Satano-Grigorist belief system. Because they primarily interact with Yahwists, they are rarely encountered or mentioned by Satano-Grigorists, who are far more concerned with the study of angels than saints.

Satano-Grigorists identify some major Yahwist religious figures, such as Jesus Christ, as merely saints, which can be at odds with the Yahwist understanding of such figures. Christians, for example, believe Jesus is both the son of Yahweh and the incarnation of Yahweh himself, and that he is therefore divine rather than purely human. Satano-Grigorists, on the other hand, view Jesus as a human prophet who later became a saint after his death.

See also

• Angel
• Spirit
• Worship
• Yahwism