Augustine on Science and Matters of Religion
Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, trans. Albert C. Outler (circa 420 C.E.), chap. 3, sec. 9.When it is asked what we ought to believe in matters of religion, the
answer is not to be sought in the exploration of the nature of things,
after the manner of those whom the Greeks called "physicists". Nor
should we be dismayed if Christians are ignorant about the properties
and the numbers of the basic elements of nature, or about the motion,
order, and deviations of the stars, the map of the heavens, the kinds
and nature of animals, plants, stones, springs, rivers, and mountains;
about the divisions of space and time, about the signs of impending
storms, and the myriad other things which these "physicists" have come
to understand, or think they have. For even these men, gifted with such superior insight, with their ardor in study and their abundant leisure, exploring some of these matters by human conjecture and others through historical inquiry, have not yet learned everything there is to know. For the Christian it is enough to
believe that the cause of all created things, whether in heaven or on
earth, whether visible or invisible, is nothing other than the goodness
of the Creator, who is the one and the true God.