Religion and Law Series (7 vols.)

From the ashes of the Soviet Union, several fledgling democracies arose, achieving various degrees of success in governance. For the next several years, “what makes democracies work?” became legal philosophy’s most pressing question. In Calvin the Magistrate, George Gatgounis examines a democracy which literally sprang up overnight—sixteenth-century Geneva. Seeking insight from this historical example, Gatgounis explores how Geneva was transformed in the days of Calvin into a functional republic in a very short time.

The Puritan era exhibited a renaissance in biblical scholarship. In The Puritan View of Substantive Biblical Law, George Gatgounis provides a legal insider’s perspective on key Puritan luminaries and their insights into biblical law.

Protestants and Catholics of our day may continue to disagree regarding the Eucharist, but the debate is nothing new. In the ninth century AD, Radbertus and Ratramnus—two monks living in the same monastery—debated the nature of the Eucharist. George J. Gatgounis argues that understanding the debate between these “monastery mates” of the Middle Ages provides a solid foundation for discussing the basic issues of the current debate.

What makes a government survive? Why do some governments survive while others are overturned by their own people? In The Necessity of Governmental Integrity and Survivability of American Constitutional Democracy, George Gatgounis argues that a constitution—a piece of paper—does not make a nation into a democracy. Democracies exist because the prevailing cultural and social values prompt the people to want a democracy. Gatgounis argues that governments last as long as people want them to. When governments have integrity, they have credibility. When they have credibility, they have legitimacy. When they have legitimacy, they have survivability.

The literature of international law has a shallow canon in comparison with other areas of law. Some believe that this is so because international law does not exist in a substantive way, as there is no court of all nations with any governing power. In International Law Afloat on a Sea of Religious Ethics, George Gatgounis explains how international law for the Western world before the seventeenth century derived much of its substance from religious ethics. Throughout the text, Gatgounis explores how religious ethics undergirded the early development of international law, and what an increasingly religiously diverse modern world means for the future of law on a global scale.

As counsel for the Rutherford Institute, George Gatgounis represented Robert Hussein, a Kuwaiti citizen during the time of the American liberation of Kuwait, who converted from Islam to Christianity. Mr. Hussein’s wife, a devout Muslim, reported him to a Shia family court judge. The Shia family court judge—according to Shar’ia law—sentenced Mr. Hussein to death. Mr. Hussein, accordingly, fled to the United States. The Robert Hussein case explores the foreign policy implications of American troops defending nations that deny one of our most fundamental freedoms—the freedom to choose one’s own religion.

In Expounding the Gospel and Law of God, George Gatgounis argues that today’s Christianity needs an intellectual and spiritual “clean up,” similar to the one Martin Luther sought at the dawn of the Reformation. Gatgounis’ work is a detailed proposal for an “exegetical homiletic” that produces sermons true to the Bible. Gatgounis demonstrates how to use the beauty of the original Greek and Hebrew to produce faithful and powerful sermons.