{"id":2280,"date":"2025-05-08T09:17:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T09:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/?page_id=2280"},"modified":"2025-12-16T14:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T14:40:13","slug":"glossary-christianness-versus-christianity-and-christianism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/?page_id=2280","title":{"rendered":"GLOSSARY – Christianness versus christianity and christianism"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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CHRISTIANNESS VERSUS CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIANISM<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cTo be Christian can be understood as the\u00a0confession of a personal faith that adopts an attitude analogous to that of Christ<\/em>, to the measure that Christ represents the central symbol of one\u2019s own life. I give the name\u00a0Christianness<\/strong>\u00a0to a\u00a0new, but genuine Christian consciousness\u2026\u00a0<\/em>This new conviction is spreading throughout the world, especially among the younger generations, and among those who have moved away from the over-institutionalization of Christianity, official Christianity in particular\u201c (\u201cThe Dawn of Christianess\u201d, New York 2000).<\/p><\/blockquote>

Christianness\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>is the encounter with Christ at the center of one\u2019s self, at the center of the human community and at the center of reality. It is a personal Christic faith that strives to adopt the posture of Christ (the \u201cChristic principle\u201d) <\/em>and would come to be \u201can ecclesiastical\u00a0mutation\u201d<\/em>\u00a0in Christian self-understanding beyond that of medieval\u00a0Christendom<\/strong>\u00a0and modern\u00a0Christianity.<\/strong>\u00a0In this self-understanding, Christ as the mystical nucleus of faith would have more weight than the\u00a0Church<\/em>\u00a0(the sacramental dimension) and more than\u00a0Christianity<\/em>\u00a0(the social aspect). It is not a matter of a totally new reality, but rather of one present in many great Christians throughout history, who for that reason may have wound up uncomfortable in the Church itself. Their names are a roll call of illustrious Christians who lived their Christianness after “overcoming” the prevailing Christianity or Christendom: Tertulian, Origen, Joaqu\u00edn de Fiore, Dante, Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, St. John of the Cross, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, Le Saux, etc. It would be a form at once\u00a0new\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0ancient<\/em> of conceiving a Christic existence. It has aided in a double liberation: liberation from a fixed and determined political order (Christendom) and liberation from Christian identity linked to the acceptance of a determined set of religious and cultural norms (Christianity).
For Panikkar, the Church and Christianity itself must evolve from rigid collective structures to a more personal conception,\u00a0Christianness,<\/em> which may well come to be the way of living the Christian reality in the third millennium, overcoming the second millennium in which\u00a0Christianity<\/em>\u00a0had probably been too imbued with\u00a0Christendom<\/em>. He insists on the experiential dimension and that Christ is not the heritage of Christians only: to speak of Christianness is to speak of a Christian identity that goes beyond a juridico-institutional membership and beyond even a doctrinal consensus. It is a matter of being \u201cathirst for the Kingdom\u201d and achieving the experience of confidence in the Spirit\u00a0<\/em>that Jesus Christ had.
The\u00a0ecclesiastical mutation<\/em>\u00a0in Christian self-understanding attempts to be nothing less than \u201cthe Christian contribution to the\u00a0cosmic change in the adventure of the universe\u00a0<\/em>in which all of us are implicated (\u201cL\u2019albada de la cristiania\u201d<\/em>). Panikkar\u2019s most daring commitment is to attempt to go beyond the merely historical reality of Christianity in order to affirm that Christianness is a\u00a0factum<\/em>, something not solely dependant on us. Panikkar defines the meaning of this factum with a triple distinction:\u00a0Christianity\u00a0<\/em>(social aspect),\u00a0Church\u00a0<\/em>(sacramental dimension), and Christ (mystical nucleus of faith,\u00a0Christic principle<\/em>). This\u00a0Christic principle<\/em> probably serves as the authentic identification for many who identify themselves as Christians and do not feel separated from Christ nor outside the Church, inspite of not obeying all the ecclesiastic laws, although it is not an individualistic position, it is not \u201can uncontrolled anarchy\u201d (The Dawn of Christianess<\/em>).
Christianness would definitely take very seriously\u00a0overcoming the Law\u00a0<\/em>without falling into the temptation of\u00a0Christendom<\/em>. The experience of Christian maturity that the concept of Christianness strives to convey arises as a new hope: the encounter with Christ at the center\u00a0of one\u2019s self,\u00a0<\/em>at the center of the\u00a0human community<\/em>, and at the center of\u00a0reality.<\/em><\/p>

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CHRISTIANNESS VERSUS CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIANISM \u201cTo be Christian can be understood as the\u00a0confession of a personal faith that adopts an attitude analogous to that of Christ, to the measure that Christ represents the central symbol of one\u2019s own life. I give the name\u00a0Christianness\u00a0to a\u00a0new, but genuine Christian consciousness\u2026\u00a0This new conviction is spreading throughout the world, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2280","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5203,"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2280\/revisions\/5203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raimon-panikkar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}