For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9).
Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant (Isa. 56:11-12).
A Manichean would deny them both. He would say that the confidence underlying both views of the future is illusory. A Manichean insists that there is an equal ultimacy in history between good and evil. It proclaims faith in the eternality of the struggle between good and evil. In Manicheanism's worldview, neither good nor evil can ever totally overwhelm the forces of its opposition. Ethics is a matter of power, and the struggle for power is eternal.
Manicheanism is an ancient philosophy, but it still flourishes today. Modern scientific evolutionism is Manichean to the core. Denying the origin of the world in the creation out of nothing by God, the evolutionist also denies the scientific validity, and therefore the relevance, of any final judgment of the world by God. The world will end, he insists, if it ends at all, in the heat death of the universe. Absolute zero will be the universe's tomb. [Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), ch. 2.] Nothing that man or his successor species can do will change this. The end of all life will be cosmically impersonal, just as the origin of all life was cosmically impersonal. There will be no final judgment. On the other hand, if the world does not end, then it must be assumed to continue eternally in a series of cosmic expansions and contractions. [Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation: from Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974).] There will be no final judgment.
The evolutionist's denial of final judgment leads to his denial of absolute ethics. In between the Big Bang and the heat death of the universe, mankind survives briefly and precariously. There are no binding laws other than the laws of evolution. That which enables a species to survive genetically in an ever-changing environment is all that matters to that species. Situation ethics -- absolute within any limited environment and time period, but subject to change tomorrow -- is the logical corollary of a world that is not subject to a final judgment by God.
Modern evolutionism is merely the latest in a long line of Manichean religions. In the thirteenth century, Manicheanism was brought into Western Europe as a result of renewed East-West contacts during the crusades. One medieval version of this dualist heresy was called the Albigensian heresy because of its geographical concentration in southern France. Variants were known as Catharism and Bogomilism. [Stephen Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (New York: Cambridge University Press, [1947] 1982); Bernard Hamilton, The Albigensian Crusade (London: Historical Association, 1974); Milan Loos, Dualist Heresy in the Middle Ages (Prague: Academia M. Nijhof, 1974).]
Christianity has always opposed Manicheanism. The doctrine of the final judgment militates against any belief in an eternal conflict between good and evil. But, beginning on the fringes of Protestantism in the late nineteenth century, and escalating in the United States since about 1980, the Manichean heresy has experienced a revival. Pastors seem unaware of its existence, even after this heresy has entered their own congregations.