Today’s society is saturated with competing answers to the dilemmas of love, sex, relationships, marriage, gender roles, and family. In The Redemption of Love, Carrie Miles resists the temptation to jump to solutions without first stepping back to understand the problem and its cause.

Meticulous in her arguments, Miles leads the reader in discovering what the Bible has to say about love in the twenty-first century by using the relatively new tools of socioeconomics. The result is a comprehensive, compelling approach considering economics not in terms of money but with reference to how we allocate our time and energy and how our beliefs and values shape our identities.

Miles outlines a consistent description of biblical love throughout scripture. The differences that divide men and women and set them up for conflict today were not created by God, she argues, but by sin. According to Miles, the Bible shows us that the love God envisioned for his people is a "soul-stirring, deep, and passionate" love–the only effective solution Christians can offer in today’s battle to save marriage and family. This will be a valuable text for courses on family, marriage, and gender issues, as well as for clergy and laypeople searching for answers.

Dr. Miles successfully navigates the turbulent waters of modern sexual life and traditional Christian morality. She calls both husbands and wives to greater mutual love and regard through her careful reading of the passages of Ephesians and Matthew most challenging to today’s Christian. The delightful chapter on the Song of Songs is worth the price of the book.–Jennifer Roback Morse, author of Smart Sex: Finding Lifelong Love in a Hook-up World

Combining keen observations with sociological evidence, this book offers an understanding of the factors that have shaken the institutions of marriage and the family in modern societies and what can be done about it. Building upon both previous scholarship and a generous but responsible use of biblical writings, the author explains how we can be liberated from a self-centered ‘economic’ view of gender and sexuality relationships. The Redemption of Love calls for nothing less than a new ethics for marriage, gender, and family relationships, which in reality is a reaffirmation of biblical ethics. I look forward to using this well-written and insightful book in my gender and sexuality course.–Jack Balswick, Fuller Theological Seminary