Trading the Real Jesus for an Empty Counterfeit
Many industries require counterfeit detection. My experience as a former bank teller and banker showed me how U.S. dollar bills have various features that validate what real cash is. I remember times when customers came to the counter to make large deposits of dollar bills. Sometimes, there would be funny-looking bills where I would have to check under a blue light to see if they had the correct security strip or hold them up towards the fluorescent light above to see if the watermark showed in the right place. If the bills were legitimate, then the customer’s bank accounts would be filled with money immediately. If they were counterfeit, we, as the bank, would have to keep them, fill out a report, and deliver the fake money to the US Secret Service Counterfeit Investigations. My encounters with counterfeit bills have been mostly with distraught account holders who are shocked to find that the money they were given or a gift was fake, and thus not money entered their accounts as they expected. Thus, counterfeits, whether cash or something else, are wrong in intent because they portray themselves to be the real thing when they are not and thus are not able to deliver on what they promise to be (when detected).
It’s the same thing with Jesus. In the early 20th century, the rise of Theological Liberalism proclaimed a Jesus that was different from what biblical, orthodox Christianity had affirmed for thousands of years. As J. Gresham Machen assessed, “There is a profound difference, then, in the attitude assumed by modern liberalism and by Christianity toward Jesus the Lord. Liberalism regards Him as an Example and Guide; Christianity, as a Saviour: liberalism makes Him an example for faith; Christianity, the object of faith. . . . What then is the difference between liberalism and Christianity with regard to the person of our Lord? The answer might be difficult to set forth in detail. But the essential thing can be put almost in a word—liberalism regards Jesus as the fairest flower of humanity; Christianity regards Him as a supernatural Person.”1
In this long-form essay, I will introduce Christology (the Doctrine/study of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ) in two ways: the counterfeit Christology presented by Liberal Theology and the historic, orthodox, biblical Christology that is rooted in the Holy Scriptures and consistently affirmed by faithful Christians from the early church to this present day. What you will find from this theological primer on Christology is that the presuppositions of Liberal Christology are not dead but still alive and repackaged in the various expressions of Progressive Christianity.2 But, more importantly, you will see how the Jesus as shown in Scripture and consistently confessed by the universal church throughout the generations is the real Jesus and far more glorious than Liberal Theology’s Jesus because he is actually who he says he is and thus able to bring everlasting life (John 3:16).
What is a Liberal Theology of Christology?
To answer, “How does Liberal Theology understand the Person and Work of Christ?” we have to briefly define what Liberal Theology is. As a reminder from my previous article, Theological Liberalism can be defined as “A movement in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant circles that builds from the assumption that Christianity is reconcilable with the positive human aspirations, including the quest for autonomy. Liberalism desires to adapt religion to modern thought and culture. Consequently, it views divine love as realized primarily, if not totally, in love of one’s neighbor and the kingdom of God as a present reality found especially within an ethically transformed society.”3 Put another way, “The task of liberal theology was to reinterpret Christian belief within the cultural values and intellectual trends of modernism. It has two basic commitments. On the one hand, liberal theology explicitly embraces the rational and scientific assumptions of modernism. On the other hand, liberal theology retains allegiance to Christianity.”4
From these definitions, five observations on Liberal Theology’s Christology arise that deserve our attention and response.
First, Liberal Theology roots its Christology in a dependence on human reasoning and experience, not divine revelation. When René Descartes stated, “I think; therefore, I am,” he grounded all knowledge and the standard of truth primarily on autonomous human reasoning as the starting point (i.e., Rationalism). Later on, Immanuel Kant would assert that all knowledge comes by human experience (i.e., subjectivism), and thus “human autonomy is primary; knowledge of metaphysics is impossible apart from experience; and theology must be done according to an extratextual interpretation of Scripture.”5 If one’s understanding of how we know truth is based on rationalism and experience, then already he or she has undercut any possibility of the supernatural.6 From this epistemological foundation, Liberal theologians like Fredrich Schleiermacher and others would construct a “theology from below” that is rooted not in divine revelation as an objective reality but in human experience, thus rejecting the framework of God as the sovereign Lord and creator of all reality and replacing that with a deistic, panentheistic, or evolutionary framework of reality (Or a Combination of all of them).7 This presupposition leads us to the next observation.
Second, Liberal Theology makes a distinction between the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Scripture by treating the Bible as merely human literature. If human reason and, consequently, human experience are the authorities for determining truth, then the claims of Holy Scriptures are scrutinized by said standards, especially that of Jesus. At the heart of Liberal Theology’s understanding of the Bible is Historical Criticism/Historical-Critical Method of Biblical Interpretation, which “seeks to understand the Bible in light of its historical and cultural backgrounds, that is, as a book arising out of a human context. Historical criticism uses a variety of methods to determine what actually happened in history “before,” “behind” or “under” the text rather than seeking a “divine” meaning in the text itself.”8 When applied to the doctrine of Christ, liberal theologians have sought to determine the “real Jesus” by looking for the “historical Jesus” apart from any presupposition of divine revelation. Yet, this results in, as Stephen Wellum summarizes, liberal scholars failing “to find the real Jesus for the same reason: They reject the revealed Jesus because they are beholden to Enlightenment principles that are alien to the Bible and its authoritative presentation of Jesus’s identity” thus removing or explaining away anything supernatural about him.9 Therefore . . .
Third, Liberal Theology downplays Jesus’ deity by either disregarding it or completely removing it. If liberal theology rejected any openness to Holy Scripture’s supernatural claims, then we are left with a Jesus who is merely “the fairest flower of humanity.”10 Because liberal scholars already assumed to “demythologize” the Bible, especially the New Testament (NT), their Christology took a variety of forms.11 Schleiermacher abandoned the classical understanding of Jesus as truly God and truly man and instead opted for a merely human Jesus who achieved perfect God-consciousness and was thus sinless. “Christ fully experienced absolute dependence on God-consciousness, and this reality was what rendered him unique yet similar to all human beings in pursuit of such consciousness.”12 Others embraced a Kenotic theology that held that at the incarnation, the Son of God “emptied himself of all or some of his properties down to the level of the human development attained and then gradually won them back in the way of development.”13 Albrecht Ritschl rejected the supernatural realities of Christ in that, as Herman Bavinck assessed, “Christ is not God in a metaphysical sense; rather, in his case, the name ‘God’ denotes his rank and status in the kingdom of God. It is not a reference to his being, but to his office. Christ may be called ‘God’ because in his relation to us, he occupies the place and value of God.”14 In short, as Machen aptly summarized, “According to the modern liberal Church, Jesus differs from the rest of men only in degree and not in kind; He can be divine only if all men are divine.”15
Fourth, Liberal Theology rejected the historic understanding of Christ’s atonement as a penal substitutionary atonement for other theories. Because of the previous points, liberal theologians vehemently rejected the classic understanding of Christ’s work of salvation and, instead, adopted other views. For example, according to Schleiermacher’s “God-consciousness,” Jesus saves by assuming “believers into the power of His God-consciousness, and this is his redemptive activity.”16 He also held that Christ’s atoning sacrifice can’t be thought of as “vicarious” or what we would call a “penal” substitution as “it could not have been expected of us that we should be able to begin this life for ourselves, nor does the act of Christ set us free from the necessity of pursuing this spiritual life by our own endeavour in fellowship with Him.”17 Another theologian, Gustav Aulen, presented a modified version of Christus Victor (Christ as Victor theory) by stating that Jesus’s atoning sacrifice won against the divine conflict against the evil powers of the world. Christ’s work on the cross accomplished not the satisfaction of God’s wrath against our sinfulness but the liberation of humanity from the oppression of “The powers holding humanity in slavery [which] include sin, death, the law, and demonic forces.”18 Additionally, Horace Bushnell promoted the Moral-Influence Theory of the atonement, which held that Christ’s death was meant to demonstrate the extent of God’s love for us, not pay a penalty for an offence against God.19 One common theme to notice in these liberal theological examples is the lack of emphasis or avoidance of the concept of humans’ sinfulness and rebellion against a holy God, and thus needing a sacrifice outside of human effort to save.20
Fifth, Liberal Theology interprets Christ’s resurrection not as a real, historical event but as an inspirational, moral, and metaphorical myth. By removing the supernatural emphasis of the person and work of Christ, liberal theologians viewed the reality of the resurrection with suspicion through a variety of interpretations. Some, like Hermann Samuel Reimarus and Albert Schweitzer, viewed the resurrection as a lie spread by the disciples to inspire a “moral and political salvation that Jesus attempted to achieve, not a spiritual salvation.”21 Others like David Friedrich Strauss and Bultmann didn’t see it as the disciples lying or being deceived, but as a mythological idea made by them meant to inspire faith in Jesus.22 In conclusion, due to the presuppositions of Liberal theology, the resurrection of Jesus is at best a fantastical fairytale that is meant to inspire a devotion to “spreading the kingdom of God” but with no substance, as there is no real, bodily resurrection of this Jesus to hope in.
What is Orthodox, Biblical Christology, and Why It Still Stands
If J. Gresham Machen is correct that Liberalism/Liberal Theology is an entirely different (and opposing) religion from Christianity, what then is historic, biblical, orthodox Christology? Let’s address those five previous points:
First, historic Christology presupposes that the Bible is divine revelation, which communicates propositional theology, thus giving a full-orbed Christology. Unlike liberal theologians who approached the Bible as merely a collection of human literature, Christians since the earliest days of the church have held that “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16) in that God has spoken to us through the Holy Spirit carrying along the biblical authors. Whereas Liberal theology has a “low” view of the Scriptures, Wellum states that the Christian worldview must hold to a “high” view, which is defined as follows:
The Bible is God’s inerrant and infallible word; it is written through the free agency of historical human authors inspired by God; it progressively reveals God’s own worldview (God’s relation to and work in creation) and his authoritative interpretation of his acts within and throughout history; it culminates with the historical person and work of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promises and the completion of his eternal plan for all things.23
Therefore, biblical interpretation requires us not to insert our meaning into the text and flow of the biblical narrative nor cut out parts of Scripture that don’t fit our plausibility structures but, instead, receive the text of Scripture according to its own terms.
Second, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology states that the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Scripture are one and the same. The NT authors, let alone the Gospel writers, clearly assumed that the Christ of Scripture is a real historical figure. Liberal scholars have sought to put away any notion of the supernatural when understanding Jesus in the Gospels, yet the Gospels themselves don’t see the reality of Christ’s deity as a hindrance to his historicity.24 Instead of seeing the Christ of Scripture as myth and reconstructing an anti-supernatural depiction of Jesus, historic Christology understood that the only way to understand Christ is to make the foundation the text and presuppositions of Holy Scripture. As Wellum states:
We can only warrant the theological/metaphysical claim that Jesus is the divine Son incarnate and that he has universal significance by placing him within the framework, categories, and teaching of an authoritative, reliable Scripture. Orthodox Christology is rooted in a specific conception of God, Scripture, humans, and so on, and apart from that theology, it cannot stand. In the end, whether it is Christology or any other doctrine, we must articulate and defend the theological system on which it stands, along with Scripture as more than basically reliable. For a normative theology, we need more than the “facts” of Scripture; we also need “God’s interpretation” of those facts, which alone yields a true, universal, and theological account.25
In short, to truly have an accurate account of who and what Jesus is, one must “proceed self-consciously and explicitly from the Bible’s self-presentation of Christ as the only way to identify him rightly,” or else we will not be able to say anything worth theological salt.26 Therefore, the Jesus revealed in Scripture (and attested by extrabiblical historical sources) inconveniently comes to us not merely as a human but as the eternal Son of God, which leads us to the next point.
Third, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology affirms the uniqueness of Christ because he is truly God and truly Man. Whereas Liberal Theology viewed the deity of Christ as an embarrassing liability to the credibility of Christianity, historic Christology held Christ’s truly divine nature and truly human nature as essential to what makes Christianity powerful and compelling. Many passages can be provided to showcase the divine nature of the Son of God, but from the prophecies of the OT to the clear statements and demonstrates in the NT, “since the Bible reveals Christ’s activity long before he became a man; foretells the coming of Christ as the coming of God; calls him by the names of God; ascribes to him the attributes, relations, and actions of God; and gives him the honors of God, then Christ is God.”27 But Scripture shows like in John 1:14 that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Son of God took on a truly human nature in which he not only experienced physical, material functions but also possessed mental, immaterial elements.28 Therefore, biblically orthodox Christians have rightly and joyfully confessed the wonder of the incarnation of the Son of God because . . .
Fourth, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology affirms that Christ accomplished a specific work of salvation by his penal substitutionary atonement, thus making him a glorious moral example. The reason for which the eternal Son became incarnate is, as the Nicene Creed states, “for us and for our salvation,” and at the heart of his work of salvation is his penal substitutionary atonement at the cross. Whereas Liberal theology wanted the cross to be one of moral example, a sign of victory against evil, or a display of God’s love, the Bible states in many ways how “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3), God the Father “for our sake . . . made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”(2 Cor. 5:21), and “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). The OT testifies of the need for a perfect sacrifice to pardon sinful man by looking forward to the suffering servant who will be “pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:5-6). It is Jesus of whom Isaiah was looking forward to, and in whose death on the cross those who trust in him can be saved from God’s wrath against their sin and instead be “justified by faith” and thus “have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1-2).29 Whereas Liberal theology saw a great moral figure whose death emphasized moral improvement, historic Christology proclaims all are sinners before a holy God who needs the perfect sacrifice of Christ to pay the penalty for their sin so that they can be reconciled to God.
Fifth, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology affirms Christ’s real, bodily resurrection, which grounds a real hope for the Christian life. Because most of Liberal theology’s proponents belittle or outright deny the reality and significance of Christ’s resurrection, there are no substantial grounds of hope for the Christian after death. But historic Christology recognizes what Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19 that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Instead, it recognizes that Jesus’s resurrection was not a myth or some motivational allegory but a legitimate, real, physical resurrection to the point of him not only eating fish (Luke 24:41-43) but also having the disciples like Thomas touch his pierced side and nail-scarred wrists (Luke 24:39-40; John 20:24-28). But if Christ has truly been raised from the dead, then Christianity actually means more than just a merely moral life, but the greatest news that anyone can ever hear and embrace wholeheartedly. As Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley doxologically summarize:
What a glorious message the empty tomb conveyed! “The Lord is risen indeed!” (Luke 24:34). All the promises and blessings of salvation lie wrapped in this wonderful news. The best news ever heard came from a graveyard! Oh, victorious resurrection—death is disarmed, sin is subdued, the world is overcome, Satan is trodden underfoot, the grave is sanctified, hell is conquered, and the old man is mortified. Do you see it and embrace it? Redemption is accomplished! Eternal life is secured! Justice is satisfied! The curse of the law is buried! Guilt is paid! Debt is cancelled! God’s amen on the all-sufficient work of Christ is loudly declared! All of salvation is verified! Christianity is true! Jesus is alive! Hallelujah!30
Application: Two Choices – A “Chest-less” Christ or a Christ with a Chest
C. S. Lewis, the British Medieval Literature scholar, apologist, and contemporary of J. Gresham Machen, wrote in The Abolition of Man about how the modern education landscape of his day was creating “men without chests” by promoting relativism. Instead of seeking to connect the intellect (head) and appetites (stomach) with the right sentiments or objective principles (chest), relativism seeks “to make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”31 In short, we make people with big brains and unrestrained desires, which will eventually lead to the self-destruction of society.
Allow me to use creative liberty with the same picture, but for who/what Jesus is and his work. What does Liberal Theology give you when you ask proponents to give you Jesus? They will give you a Christ without a chest. I’ll be blunt: Theological Liberalism doesn’t give you all of Jesus but a carcass of him. Instead of giving you all of Christ, which Scripture unashamedly unfolds, Liberal Theology embarrassingly withholds what is deemed not “modern,” “relevant,” and “acceptable” to the modernizing culture by gutting out the main body of what makes Christ life-transforming in the first place. What you receive is the husk of Christ, in whom you can fill in whatever preferred agenda you want, other than the agenda revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Although this Jesus would be accepted by a progressive, secular culture and non-Christian agenda, he is devoid of any true power. Altogether, the Christ of Liberal Theology is just a “better” guy like you that can’t be of any everlasting good, or, as Machen summarized, “According to the modern liberal Church, Jesus differs from the rest of men only in degree and not in kind; He can be divine only if all men are divine.”32 He comes to you as an empty, vain example to follow with no everlasting life to come after.
But the Jesus revealed in the Holy Scriptures whom Christians for the past 2000 years have worshiped is none other than the eternal Son of God incarnate who, in his own words to Pontius Pilate, said, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). It is this Jesus who is the only begotten Son of the Father who as the Word spoke all the galaxies into existence who took on a truly human nature, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11). Because Jesus is all that is revealed in the Scriptures, we have a Savior who is infinitely glorious and able to save sinner to the uttermost so that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame’”(Rom. 10:9-11). It is this Jesus—the real Jesus—that “whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Friends, there are only two choices: an empty corpse or the all-sufficient, almighty Son of God incarnate.
Throw away the former. Joyfully receive and worship the latter.
Author: Joseph Yu (B.A., Boyce College; M.Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a member of Gospel Life Church in Sunrise, FL, since 2017. In his spare time, he writes on his blog, The “Yu”ng Theologian, where he aims to show that there is always hope for Christians and churches who want to be more infatuated with Jesus.
J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, new ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 82.
“Who Was Jesus? Part Two,” Progressive Christianity, accessed June 27, 2026, https://progressivechristianity.org/resource/who-was-jesus-part-two/. For more examples or definitions of Progressive Christianity, see here and here.
Stanley Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), 72.
Stanley E. Porter and Steven M. Studebaker, “Method in Systematic Theology: An Introduction,” in Evangelical Theological Method: Five Views, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Steven M. Studebaker, Spectrum Multiview Books (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 10.
Stephen Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 60.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 260. See also Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundary of Pure Reason, trans. J. W. Semple (Edinburgh: Thomas Clark, 1838), 63.
See Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 61–62; Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology: From Canon to Concept, vol. 1 (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 61.
Grenz, Guretzki, and Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, 59.
Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 66.
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 82.
Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 619
Gregg Allison, Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 382. See also Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:262.
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:263–64. See also Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 364–72.
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:264–65.
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 95.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928), 385.
Ibid., 461.
Allison, Historical Theology, 407.
Erickson, Christian Theology, 717–20.
Allison, Historical Theology, 359.
Ibid., 420.
Ibid., 422–25.
Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 86–87.
Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Man and Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 727–28.
Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:95. See also Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 2:725.
Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 85 (emphasis original).
Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 2:763. See also Joseph Yu, “Glory Be to Our Great God | Day 24 — God, the Son,” The “Yu”ng Theologian, June 27, 2026, https://theyungtheologian.substack.com/p/glory-be-to-our-great-god-day-24.
Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 211–12.
For more on penal substitutionary atonement, see Stephen Wellum, Christ Alone: The Uniqueness of Jesus as Savior (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), chaps. 7–8; Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007); chap. 49 in Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Man and Christ.
Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 2:903.
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 37.
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 95.
