Manichaeism (WAS predestination & the preterite)

[Vaska]

Monte Davis tells it as it was:
[snip]
>Manichaeism had a short run around the Mediterranean, and is remembered
>chiefly as a label applied (mostly sloppily) to Christian heresies. But it
>did last for a thousand years or more in places from Persia to China... and
>it was *extremely* heavy on the division into the elect, the "lay"
>Manichees (with at least a shot at elect status), and the deeply,
>double-dyed damned remainder of humanity.

You got it: and Augustine was an upstanding example of a "lay" Manichean.
[Just a little addendum to that last post I sent.]

Vaska, who bets she's the only *semi*-baptised soul on this list and has no
idea what Augustine's seedy past has to do with Thomas Pynchon; but what the
hell....