The Restoration of Love is an eloquent reflection on person-to-person love amid the denigrating and dehumanizing effects of our modern technological society. According to W. ter Horst, there is a real need for a kind of modern "art of love" because in today's individualized society various older forms of loving have disappeared and the emerging newer forms arrive without any meaningful or enduring moorings. Love has been devalued and is now in need of restoration to its rightful place of honor.
Sure to be of interest to a broad range of readers, The Restoration of Love discusses the problems of everyday life. Ter Horst is concerned with people's experiences, with their creaturely equality and freedom, with their ability to properly give and receive love. Yet this is no mere psychological treatise. Though the focus of the book may be on everyday life and problems, the perspective from which ter Horst writes includes nothing less than the divine kingdom of love itself. Thus, as ter Horst himself says, he writes "with fear and trembling because [writing on love] sounds pretentious, evokes the wrong associations, and because love actually is ineffable - for me that is the dream, the vision of the Messianic Kingdom, the Kingdom of Love, where all people and all things are handled with respect for their own nature and so come into their own right."