Who is to Blame?

This book tackles one of the biggest conundrums in Christian thinking: how an omnipotent God can allow natural disasters. This area of thinking - commonly called theodicy - has occupied theologians down the centuries.

Bob White, a geophysicist, brings a particular perspective to the issue, showing how natural processes operate and highlighting how earthquakes, volcanoes and floods serve the natural order, bringing fertility. Most such events are converted to disasters by the way humans behave: population growth, widespread inequality, foolish farming and building practices and climate change all contribute, exacerbating heat waves, famines and droughts.

He then outlines the insights that Jacob (famine), Job (storms and human activity) and Jesus (the famous Tower of Siloam) offer towards a sensible response to disasters. While creation groans, we live in expectation; we are our brothers' keepers.

Professor Robert S. White is Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1994. He is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.