If you’re familiar with American culture, you’ll know full well that the principles of justice, liberty and equality remain prevalent just as any other place in the West, they are remnants of a Christian worldview that has largely influenced Europe, and as a result, the colonies of the New World. It was perceived, and remains true irregardless of perception, that only from the Christian worldview can we understand what true justice is, the right ordering of human society according to the will of God; what liberty is, freedom from the power of sin for the fulfillment of our created purpose; and what equality is, mankind created equally in the image of God. But as Western culture continues its march towards an abandonment of biblical authority, and an embrace of religious humanism, many have sought for a different origin for the principles that bind our societies together. For many Latin Americans, Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), also known as El Libertador, is credited with ushering in justice, liberty and equality. But is he truly reflective of these principles which are entrenched in Western society?
Bolívar is hailed internationally as one of the world’s greatest liberators, recognized as the national hero of six Latin American nations. He fought over 100 battles against the Spanish Empire in South America, covered twice the territory of Alexander the Great in his military campaigns, spear-headed the independence of the Northern Spanish provinces, and established the republic of Gran Colombia (1819-1831), which formed parts of present-day Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.[1] He dedicated his life towards the liberation of the Latin American people from Spanish oppression, aspiring to establish a just and equal society, and writing in his famous manifesto, La Carta de Jamaica, a “long indictment of the atrocities Spain had wrought on the colonies since the conquest of the sixteenth century,” while offering his advice to “the future new nations of the Americas.”[2] It may appear at first that Bolívar was reflective of the Western principles of justice, liberty and equality, after all, that’s what he was fighting for; but if we look more closely, there is a great difference between what he stood for, and what the Christian worldview teaches.
Enlightenment Philosophy
Bolívar has been a different face for many people, he’s a social justice warrior for cultural Marxists, he’s a political model for modern utopians, he’s a symbol of hope for Latin American Socialists, and he’s a quasi-divinity for many Catholics, as a 20th century priest prayed: “Our father, Liberator Simón Bolívar, who art in the heaven of American democracy: we wish to invoke your name.”[3] But contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture, he believed that the principles of justice, liberty and equality could be realized by humanistic means, that is to say, by the unity of the people,[4] a “humanly wrought [philosophical] oneness.”[5]
There is ample evidence to suggest that Bolívar was heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, that rationalist intellectual movement of the 18th century, where man sought “to dominate by reason, a series of human problems in the world, and in particular, its fight for liberty, progress and equality.”[6] He was tutored, for example, by the Venezuelan philosopher Simón Rodriguez (1769-1854), who was steeped in enlightenment philosophy; he was an avid reader of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who repudiated the doctrine of original sin in his Émile,[7] a treatise on education that would “allow the preservation of a man’s freedom and natural goodness” to help remedy the “degradation of man in society”;[8] and he loved the French atheist Voltaire (1694-1778) above all else,[9] who believed that the first step towards progress involved casting off biblical authority.[10]
The man who many perceive as ‘El Libertador’ is in fact a materialist who denied belief in the Christian God and in the soul of man. In believing that life ended when the brain ceased its function, and that the natural sciences were the only means by which we can reason,[11] his fight for justice, liberty and equality is undermined by a Oneist worldview (no Creator-creation distinction) that cannot provide a rational explanation for what is morally good or evil, or what is progressive or regressive. There are essentially no distinctions, no absolutes in a materialist Oneist worldview, which inevitably leads to an existential crisis. But according to Bolívar in the Diary of Bucaramanga de Peru de Lacroix, he did not care:
It matters little, it’s not even worth disputing… for me, life is nothing else than the result of the union of two principles, to know of: contractility, which is a faculty of the material body, and sensibility, which is a faculty of the brain or of the intelligence.[12]
According to the historian Juan G. Gomez-Garcia, as an intellectual who denied Christian theology in favor of naturalist materialism,[13] Bolívar was one who refused to acknowledge the inconsistencies of his own worldview. He had been to Rome, he had traveled throughout Europe,[14] but regardless of the Christian influence he witnessed, he refused to acknowledge the truth of God, suppressing it by his own sinful nature (Rom. 1:18). This would have had inevitable implications for his political vision of Gran Colombia, had it been fully realized. What is not often discussed, and this may be in part due to the hero-cult of Catholic Latin America, is that Bolívar’s society would have involved the de-Christianization of a large part of South America, given his humanistic naturalism and his admiration of Voltaire as a person, his philosophy and his writings, above all other Enlightened thinkers.[15]
Nothing more than a man
It may be true that Bolívar succeeded in bringing about the independence of six Latin American nations, but he failed to bring about true justice, liberty and equality, after all, men were still enslaved to their corrupt natures, polluting every aspect of society with their sin. Political corruption and assassinations were rampant, and slavery still persisted despite its abolition. In an effort to maintain unity over his ‘ideal’ society, he took up dictatorial powers, but the divisiveness, greed and corrupt nature of man led to the inglorious splintering and collapse of the Gran Colombia, leading to his resignation.[16] Even then, however, he refused to acknowledge the doctrine of original sin, blaming his failure not on human nature itself, but on the influence of the Spanish colonizers.[17] There may be monuments set up in honor of Bolívar, and there may be a multitude who idolize him, but he is not the true liberator, he is nothing more than a sinful man who sought to bring justice, liberty and equality on his own terms. He certainly played a role in God’s sovereign plan for human history, the founding of Latin American nations, but by rejecting biblical authority, he was a secular humanist who believed that man can be the author of his own salvation and liberation, without any need for God.
The True Liberator
We should take great care as to how we perceive Bolívar, he may have played a vital role in Latin American history, but he is nothing more than a mere man, and we should not make him anything more, lest he become an idol. There is only one true liberator, the only one who will succeed and never fail to bring about justice, liberty and equality. It is not man the individual, nor the state as the collective man, it is the God-man Jesus Christ, who through his life and death, is the propitiation of our sins, and in who’s resurrection we find the power of liberation, liberty from our slavery to sin. The reason we all yearn for a society that exhibits the principles of justice, liberty and equality is because we were created for a world of moral perfection, one not tainted by the fall, not characterized by sin and death, but there is hope in the true liberator, the Son of God, for the reconciliation of man with God, and man with fellow man, for the transformation of life, and for the restoration of the world. In Him, the fragmentation of sin is brought to an end, and a new humanity is birthed, a diverse unity that man cannot accomplish by his own means.
Christ is not only saviour, he is king, he reigns and rules sovereignly on his throne, and he will hold all men accountable for violations of his law. The injustice and oppression we witness in history are all recorded, justice will be handed out, and the hope for an ideal society will be realized, but it won’t be a humanistic utopia where man is the measure of all things, it will be God’s kingdom fully realized, with Christ resplendent in all his glory at the center of all.[18] It is not by political force, military might or humanistic philosophies that we will see the regeneration of man, the restoration of all things, and the glory of God manifest in all of creation, but by the power of the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ.
[1] Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016, “Gran Colombia | historical republic, south America,” https://www.britannica.com/place/Gran-Colombia.
[2] Marshall C. Eakin, The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures (New York, NY.: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007), 178-181.
[3] David Bushnell, ed., Simón Bolívar: Man and Image (New York, NY.: Random House, 1970), 127.
[4] Eakin, The History of Latin America, 178-179.
[5] Joe Boot, “An Introduction to Utopia,” Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity, September 1, 2013, accessed August 26, 2016, http://www.ezrainstitute.ca/resource-library/articles/an-introduction-to-utopia.
[6] Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, Nueva Historia de Colombia, Tomo 2: Era Republicana, ed. Camilo Calderon Schrader (Bogota, Colombia: Planeta Colombiana Editorial S.A., 1989), 11.
[7] Rousseau states “Il n’y a point de perversité originelle dans le cœur humain” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile Ou de l’Éducation: LIVRES I, II Et III. (Chicoutimi, Quebec: Cégep de Chicoutimi, 2002 [orig. 1762]).
[8] Norman Melchert, The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy (New York, NY.: Oxford University Press, 2014), 450.
[9] Eakin, The History of Latin America, 178-179.
[10] Voltaire, Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Volume 7, ed. Georges Avenel (Paris: Aux Bureaux du Siècle, 1869).
[11] Juan Guillermo Gomez Garcia, La Carta de Jamaica 200 Años Despues: Vigencia Y Memoria de Bolívar (Bogota, Colombia: Ediciones B Colombia S.A., 2015), 80-82.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Eakin, The History of Latin America, 178-179.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Marie Arana, Bolívar: American Liberator (New York, NY.: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013), 5-6.
[17] Eakin, The History of Latin America, 181.
[18] Joe Boot, “Utopia: Always a Dystopian Nightmare,” in The Coming Pagan “Utopia”: Christian Witness in Tough Times, ed. Peter Jones (Escondido, CA.: TruthxChange, 2013).