Augustine's Confessions, Book 5, Carthage, Rome, and Milan

In Carthage, Augustine encountered a Manicchaean sage named Faustus. The sage dismissed the spiritual authority of the Old Testament due to various elements of early biblical books out of step with Christianity. While Augustine wrote a different book refuting the Sage Faustus, in the Confessions he merely tells us that being himself fairly well-schooled in fourth-century science, he found ManicChaean explanations for creation and existence to be outrageous fables. At the same time, looking back on how astronomers of his age had consistently figured out how to predict eclipses, Augustine writes that fourth-century scientists were prideful and indifferent toward the Christian God.