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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Manichean

Manichaean \Man`i*ch[ae]"an\, Manichean \Man`i*che"an\, a. Of or pertaining to the Manich[ae]ans.

Manichean

Manichaean \Man`i*ch[ae]"an\, Manichean \Man`i*che"an\, Manichee \Man"i*chee\, n. [LL. Manichaeus: cf. F. manich['e]en.] A believer in the doctrines of Manes, a Persian of the third century A. D., who taught a dualism in which Light is regarded as the source of Good, and Darkness as the source of Evil.

The Manich[ae]ans stand as representatives of dualism pushed to its utmost development.
--Tylor.

Usage examples of "manichean".

Edgar Hoover and Congressman Otto Passman are high-ranking Masons and both, significantly, reflect this philosophy and its Manichean attitude.

It was the movement called Manichean and the Church was its mortal enemy.

The Church was not a Manichean movement if only because it was not a movement at all.

There are any number of other examples in which is repeated precisely the same process we have reviewed in the case of the Manichean and the Arian.

That is why it deals blows impartially right and left, at the pessimism of the Manichean or the optimism of the Pelagian.

I fell into Manichean ways of thinking from the teaching of my garden experiences.

People of my generation, ahead of his, saw so little as it actually was then, as if the Manichean division of the world into East and West, bad and good, gave shape also to our most intimate relationships.

They needed an enemy and I was the demon on the other side of the Manichean divide.

Augustine followed a natural mental evolution when he was a Platonist before he was a Manichean, and a Manichean before he was a Christian.

Partly through these negative influences, partly through a necessary and noble asceticism which sought to emulate the awful standard of the martyrs, the earlier Christian ages had been excessively anti-corporeal and too near the danger-line of Manichean mysticism.

And in theology of course an encyclopaedic doctor like Aquinas dealt with a thousand other heresies besides the Manichean heresy.

A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop, for the moment, to the Manichean charade.

It was, in fact, the very ferocity and foulness of the time which, by a natural revulsion, called forth at the same time the Apostolic holiness and the Manichean asceticism of the Mediaeval Saints.

Vocational Educator Larsen, or the David Larsen who paints handmade inorganic toys and designs gastrointestinal recycling worms for export to Manichean survivalists?

It could not possibly have been preserved by anything else If the Church had not renounced the Manicheans it might have become merely Manichean.