Manichaean teaching stands within a recognizably Gnostic horizon, especially in its radical dualism. Reality is portrayed as a fundamental opposition between Light and Darkness, spirit and matter, with the material cosmos understood not as a harmonious creation but as the result of lower or hostile powers. The world is thus a realm of mixture and imprisonment, where elements of Light are trapped within a corrupt material order. This dualistic vision is expressed through a mythic cosmology populated by divine beings and emanations, whose drama of conflict, fall, and rescue explains the present state of existence. Rather than a simple creation by a single benevolent deity, the cosmos is attributed to demiurgic or dark forces that stand below the supreme realm of Light.

Within this framework, human beings are interpreted through a distinctively Gnostic anthropology. The human person is a composite of divine light and dark matter, with the soul understood as a fragment or “spark” of the imprisoned Light. Human embodiment is therefore experienced as a kind of captivity, and the physical body functions as a prison that obscures the soul’s true origin. This view naturally encourages a rejection or at least a deep suspicion of the material world, and it undergirds the ascetic tendencies associated with the tradition. Practices that minimize entanglement with matter are seen as cooperating with the cosmic work of liberating Light from Darkness.

Salvation, in this perspective, is not primarily a matter of external ritual or simple belief, but of gnosis—revealed knowledge. Liberation comes through understanding the hidden structure of reality, the soul’s origin in the realm of Light, and the cosmic drama that led to its current bondage. Ignorance binds, while knowledge frees; sacred teaching and scripture serve to awaken remembrance of the soul’s true home. This emphasis on inner illumination is closely tied to a hierarchical pattern of revelation, in which divine truth is disclosed progressively through a series of messengers or prophets, culminating in Mani as the final revealer of the full mystery.

The role of redeemer figures is therefore central, yet shaped by this Gnostic sensibility. Mani is presented as the consummate prophet who gathers and clarifies earlier revelations, while figures such as Jesus are interpreted as spiritual revealers whose task is to impart saving knowledge rather than to effect a merely external redemption. The community itself reflects this structure of hidden wisdom, with a distinction between an inner circle of elect, bound to stricter discipline and deeper teaching, and a wider body of hearers who support and learn from them. In this way, Gnostic ideas permeate Manichaean doctrine at every level: its vision of God and the cosmos, its understanding of the human condition, its path of salvation, and its very form of communal life.