What did Paul call Christians?

Question

(For this question please assume that Paul considered himself a Christian and that he was the author of all 13 canonical Pauline letters.)

My question is: what terms (or phrases) did Paul use most frequently in referring to Christians? I am guessing he didn't call them "Christians."

Some possibilities (to give you an idea of what I mean) might be:

• brothers

• elect (of God)

• believers

I would like the top 3 terms that he uses with some sort of figure indicating how often he used it relative to other terms.

Answer 1

OP's interest in quantifying Paul's (or, if you like, the NT's Pauline tradition) most frequently used designations for "Christians" makes for a challenging question, and one that would take a long time to deal with definitively.

Here is my best shot. Methodology: I have tabulated the figures for the thirteen NT letters in the "Pauline tradition", using the designations discussed by Paul Trebilco, Self-designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge University Press, 2011). In his introduction (p. 3), he outlines them thus:

Here are the figures:

                  +----+----+----+----+---+---+
                  | A  | B  | C  | D  | E | F |  
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+---+---+
| Romans          | 13 |  5 |  9 |  6 |   | 1 |
| 1 Corinthians   | 27 | 22 |  7 |  3 |   |   |
| 2 Corinthians   |  7 |  9 |  5 |    |   |   |
| Galatians       | 10 |  3 |    |  1 |   |   |
| Ephesians       |  1 |  9 | 11 |  1 | 1 |   |
| Philippians     |  8 |  2 |  2 |    |   |   |
| Colossians      |  2 |  4 |  6 |    | 1 | 1 |
| 1 Thessalonians | 17 |  2 |  1 |  3 |   |   |
| 2 Thessalonians |  7 |  2 |  1 |    |   |   |
| 1 Timothy       |  3 |  3 |  1 |    | 5 |   |
| 2 Timothy       |  2 |    |    |    | 1 | 1 |
| Titus           |    |    |    |    | 1 | 1 |
| Philemon        |    |  1 |  2 |    |   |   |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+---+---+
| TOTAL           | 97 | 62 | 45 | 14 | 9 | 4 |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+---+---+

Legend
A - brothers and sisters (ἀδελφοί)
B - assembly (ἐκκλησία)
C - saints (ἅγιοι)
D - believers (πιστεύοντες)
E - believers (πιστοί)
F - elect (ἐκλεκτός) n.b. NOT one of Trebilco's terms
n.b. - blanks = 0

Notes: (obvioulsy) arranged left-to-right in order of decreasing frequency. I have included the 0's (blanks) to make clear the comparison. But I have omitted the following:
   - disciples (μαθηταί);
   - way (ὁδός); and
   - christians (Χριστιανός).
as they are all "zeroes" for these thirteen books. Trebilco (it will be noted) combines the categories I have separated out as "D" and "E", as the distribution seemed interesting here between the Catholic and Pastoral epistles. There is some element of "judgment call" in D/E, so those interested should do the search/concordance work for themselves.

Do consult Trebilco's substantial book for further information. A bit of additional relevant bibliography:

• Tim Hegedus, "Naming Christians in Antiquity", Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 33 (2004): 173-190.
• Judith Lieu, Neither Jew Nor Greek?: Constructing Early Christianity (A & C Black, 2005).

There is, of course, much more, but hopefully this responds adequately to OP's interest.