Augustine’s massa damnata (humanity is a damned mass) only fits well when understood within the context of Christ’s assumptio carnis (assumption of flesh) as archetypal humanity (what it means to be human at the blueprint level) for all of humanity. And even then the mirifica commutatio (wonderful exchange) isn’t transactional but filial.
Au contraire! John of Damascus, Maximus the Confessor et al. countered the persistence of the dualists into their own time; indeed, as they stood as Christian theologians of the East in the 7th and 8th centuries. For Augustine, in his pagan days, he partook of an early dualistic religion, known as Manicheanism. This type of dualism, indeed, as it was imbibed by the Gnostics, and even some so-called Christian Gnostics, gained a foothold into the life of the Church, the world, that would perdure even into our present in the 21st century. For the Confessor and the Damascene, they were fighting some heir-apparents of the earlier formed Manicheanism and Gnosticism simpliciter. In their day, respectively, these folks were identified as the Paulicians, and latterly (after Maximus and John), the Bogomils. In nuce, these dualistic systems attempted to identify two competing principles within the world, within the principle of all reality; such that, when applied to God, they saw Light versus Darkness as two equidistant primordial combatants. As a result, they posited two principles largess, rather than just the one that Christian trinitarian monotheism thought from. Even so, these heretical dualistic groups had enough purchase among the people, that people like Maximus, in his respective time, and John of Damascus in his, felt the need to counter them through Christian and biblical theological reasoning (which also entailed some metaphysics).
Jaroslav Pelikan describes the competition this way:
While maintaining against Judaism that the Shema did not preclude the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather, when correctly understood, included it, orthodox Christian monotheism simultaneously opposed any effort to modify the singleness of the divine nature through the introduction of a double principle [į¼ĻĻĪ®]. The Trinity did not imply any compromise in the fundamental axiom that the divine principle was one, and in opposition to the Filioque this axiom was reinforced. To the dualists the orthodox declared: āFor our part, we do not follow your godless ways, nor do we say that there are two principles which are to be separated according to location. But, declaring that there is one Creator of all things and a single principle of all things, we affirm the dogma . . . of the Father and the Son.ā āThe confession of two principles, an evil god and a good oneā was understood by the orthodox to be the āfirst articleā of the Paulician creed, taken over from the Manicheans. From the Manicheans and Paulicians the notion of a multiple principle had in turn been taken over by later dualist groups, particularly the Bogomils. Biblical justification for it was found in such passages as Matthew 7:18, which said that there were two different sources for the two different kinds of deeds, or 2 Corinthians 4:3ā4, which spoke of āthe god of this world.ā Replying to such exegesis, the orthodox produced biblical evidence that the very rejection of the authority of God by the world was evidence for one principle rather than two; for Christ ācame to his own home, and his own people received him not.ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Although in later theologians the proof from Scripture took a more prominent role, in the polemics of John of Damascus such proof was heavily reinforced by logic and metaphysics. When the Manicheans contended that the two principles āhave absolutely nothing in common,ā he replied that if they both existed, they had to have at least existence in common. By their very use of the term āprinciple,ā the Manicheans contradicted their own dualism, for a principle had to be single. As in mathematics the unit was the principle of every number, so it was in metaphysics. If there was an individual principle for each existing thing, then these many principles had in turn to have a single principle behind them. Otherwise there would not be only the two principles of God and matter, as the dualists taught, but a plurality of them throughout the universe. Not only was this an absurdity on the face of it, but it negated the meaning of the word āprinciple.ā Good and evil were not to be explained on the basis of a dual principle, but rather āthe good is both the principle and the goal of all things, even of those things that are evil.ā[1]
Okay, that is all well and interesting. But what I want to do with this is to attempt to identify how this type of dualism is presently present within the 21st century world, whether that be in the sacred or secular.
My simple observation is this (and this is for Christian consumption, primarily): The devil himself loves nothing more than leading people into the delusion that in fact he is equiprimordial with the living and triune God. He likes to lead his kingdom of darkness, and even us Christians who are still, in principle, in it (but not of it), into the fantasy that his powers of darkness represent a real-life contradiction of Godās life and Light. It is easy, in our bodies of death as we are, to give into this satanic delusion; indeed, even as Christians. In this current world of chaos and disorder it might in fact appear that the devil and minions have an upper hand on Godās economy in the world in Jesus Christ. But just as the Paulicians and Bogomils logic of antiChrist proportions were defeated, indeed, imploded, by folks like Maximus and John of Damascus, in their own respective ways, that same theo-logic applies against the inherent dualisms of our day in the 21st century.
Hence, there is no absolute dualism between the living God, and the minions of darkness. As the Apostle Paul triumphantly declares: āWhen you wereĀ deadĀ in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, HeĀ made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,Ā having canceled outĀ the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; andĀ He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.Ā When He hadĀ disarmed theĀ rulers and authorities, HeĀ made a public display of them, havingĀ triumphed over them through Himā (Colossians 2:13ā15). Jesus as the Theanthropos came and destroyed, not an abstract evil, but a concrete one as that has polluted the human being, from the inside/out. Even though evil and sin remain consequential things in this āevil age,ā they eschatologically have already been put to death by the Godman, Jesus Christ. He currently is reigning at the Right Hand of the Father, which so contraposes the so called god of darkness, that the apparent war can be said to have never even really gotten off of the ground for the satanic hordeās parasitic ānothingnessā economy.
And so, our Lord, contra the dualistic-delusion exhorts: āThese things I have spoken to you, so thatĀ in Me you may have peace.Ā In the world you have tribulation, butĀ take courage;Ā I have overcome the world (John 16:33).ā He has not left us as orphans, or as defeated ones. What can death do to us? The same thing it did to Jesus. Though we die, yet shall we live. The forces of this current world order have been defeated; death has been put to death; the scourge of sin has lost its power; and we in fact are the victorious ones as we stand in the Victor of Godās grace for the world in Jesus Christ. This doesnāt necessarily make our daily lives easier, per se, but it does let us know that even though we might feel like we are drowning in the scuz of this world system, even within our own bodies of death, we know as Christians that the power of God, the Gospel funds our lives in Christ by the Holy Spirit, to the point that we can stand in victory. Even if such victory, to the dark-system, looks like defeat (like weakness and foolishness).
Dualism is a wicked evil in our world. Most Westerners are caught in its clutches by their submission to New Age theatrics and demonism (this is ironic because New Ageism is based broadly in Eastern monismāI need to flesh this out more fully since New Age ostensibly denies dualisms::I don’t think they actually achieve that though). But as we have already visited, these types of dualistic movements have been present throughout the world order since at least Genesis 3. And yet, even before these fake-power-plays came into existence in the natural world order, God had already pre-destined Himself to be for the world, to not be God without, but with us in Jesus Christ. The Enemy, the darkness has never had an eschatological chance in hell to get beyond the boundary of hell God had always already determined for it in His free life as the Deus incarnandus (the God to be incarnate).
[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600ā1700), Volume 2 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 219ā20.
Athanasius thought of sin and the fractured life with God, as a dissolution. Annihilationism has been in the news lately (because of Kirk Cameronās recent 
disclosure that he now holds to the conditional immortality or annihilationist position in regard to hell). There is a sense that at the last judgment those spiritually outside of Christ will finally be dissolved; we could even say, annihilated. But the fact of the matter remains, according to Scriptureās teaching: the final annihilation of fallen human beings will be an everlasting existence in the midst of a conscious annihilation. Such that, the individual person will exist in the dissolution they currently inhabit nowāapart from union with Christābut like a wandering star for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever, they will be fully āaliveā in the midst of their annihilated being. It behooves folks to come to Christ whilst there is still time. Maranatha
And yet, there indeed remains hope eternal in Jesus Christ. Athanasius, as noted, maintained that to be out of union with the triune God entails that the human existence, left to itself, would fully cease to existāagain, not consciously, but in its dissolved statusāindeed, this is the status fallen humanity currently inhabits (whilst fully conscious). The difference at the final judgment, is that those who die outside of Christās righteousness for them, will become fully aware of the fallen statuses they have been inhabiting their whole respective existences now. At that time, the veil will be removed, and the reality will come full weight; whether that be for those spiritually in Christ or those outside. Again, it behooves people to leave this current world-iteration in full union with Christ; simply by saying Yes to Jesusā offer of eternal life in Himself for you, for us.
Below, Athanasius details the various notes I have been engaging with in the aforementioned. He makes sure to give the fallen, those being currently destroyed (see I Corinthians 1:18), those living in a dissolving self, the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. He makes sure to end on the elevated reality that God has not in fact left us to our vanishing selves, and instead, in a āwonderful exchange,ā given us the very weight and substance of His life that He alone possesses; the only eternal life around.
. . . Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What ā or ratherĀ WhoĀ was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.[1]
[1] Athanasius, On the Incarnation,Ā Ā§7, 32-3.
How does Godās sovereignty work, in a God-world relation? First, to speak of Godās sovereignty can never be done so in abstraction from Godās cruciform life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is from within this unio mystica (āmystical unionā) of God and humanity, in the particularity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, wherein Godās actions, where His power, His sovereignty and everything else must be thought. When we ponder the end for which God humiliated Himself in the Son for the world, we recognize that this ponderance goes back even before the foundations of the world; indeed, the Lamb being slain even before the foundations of the world. So, it is as we think back from the analogy of the incarnation of God, that we might arrive upon an answer to how Godās cruciformed, Son-faced sovereignty comes to penetrate and engage this world; particularly within its fallen status. We know that Godās sovereignty is first and foremost grounded in His Divine Freedom, within His inner life of triune life, wherein He has the Self-capacity to choose what His act will be for the world which He has created; indeed, created from the seed of the women, in the man from Nazareth. As we attempt to reason from within this inner theological reality of Godās life, indeed, as we have arrived upon this primordial point of liminal access, through first encountering this God in the economy of His life for the world in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ, we come to realize that all things, as Self-determined from within the fellowshipping life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are free and open for God to act as He will. Not from an abstraction, but from the concretion of His eternally triune life. It is here that Godās a-se life Has the freedom to determine an elected contingency, first for Himself, as the Son, Godās image, freely elects to be human, which entails within that space of chosen contingency, within His to-be assumed humanity, wherein human freedom comes to find its starting point. Not as a non-contingent freedom, as the ground of His freedom is sourced by, as the eternal Logos, but as a corresponding contingent freedom with His freedom; one that is finally given agency within even His own assumed humanity for us by the Holy Spirit. So, again, things come back to this Theanthropic mystery wherein God and humanity kiss, unite, in the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the singular person of Jesus Christ.
So, Godās sovereignty works, in such a way, that humanity, and then the rest of the created order (cf. Rom 8.18ff), invades the contingent world order, which He first created, and then re-created in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, in and through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. It is as His non-contingent Logos life interfaces with the human contingent life that the miracle of Godās sovereignty comes to shape the world; both the world now, and not yet. It is within this mediating space as that inheres within the conversating person of the humanity of God in Christ, and Godself. The fact that non-contingency and contingency can communicate, and interface one with the other, whilst the non-contingency of Godās triune life circumscribes the whole event of the contingent, is indeed, the fact of Godās sovereignty in action for the world. Contingency finds its freedom to act only as an asymmetrical correspondence with Godās act within His own humanity for the world. So, ultimately, Godās freedom, as the ground of human freedom, as that is mediated for the world in the archetypal humanity of Jesus Christ, yeasts in such a way that Godās purposes, within the cruciform of His life, are made manifest as humanity in union with Him, through His union with humanity in Christ can be accomplished without violating, indeed quite to the contrary, the contingent events of created and recreated history. His will is done first and foremost because He is the One who is free within Himself. And it is within this freedom in His eternal life of love wherein He has come to sovereignly Self-determine to not be God without us, but with us for all eternity; indeed, in the face of Jesus Christ. It is within the economy of this determinate choice to be for, with and in us, wherein the contingent order comes to serve His purposes, whilst the contingent humanity finds their respective freedom with His.
But then of course there is always the āunelectedā and inscrutable reality of sin and evil in the world. This complicates things. Not as far as thwarting Godās sovereignty (as we have already defined that), but by introducing a perversion into the mix of human freedom that attempts to gain a life of its own, whilst parasiting on the real freedom God has determined for humanity in His Free Grace choice to be not-God without us; that is, not without humanity and the created order He has made humanity, His humanity in us, and ours in His, stewards over. And yet, even in the facet of sin and evil Godās cruciform humanity perdures, it yeasts in such a way that it finally gives birth to a babe, wrapped in swaddling cloths, born in a manager in Bethlehem. It is here where, when finally eventuated in the ascension, that humanity comes to have the capacity to make genuinely free choices that are in keeping with Godās sovereignly Self-determined plan and purpose for the world; indeed, as that purpose and plan has always already found its fund and orientation by its reality and elevation in the supra planned incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. And yet, there remains a battle between the old first Adam world, and the now greater and new second Adam world. Even so, Godās plan has been pervasive throughout both epochs of the first and second Adams. That is, because God first elected all of the sundry events of created history to unfold in the reality of the Deus incarnandus (God to be incarnate). This has always already been the inner reality, the beating im-pulse of the created order; i.e., Godās choice to become Creator, even as He was first Father of the Son by the Holy Spirit.
Really, all Iām saying is that the relationship between Godās sovereignty and humanity in the created order, turns out to be rather miraculous. And there remains many holes in what I have been torturously attempting to articulate. But you gotta start somewhere. And I had the urge to just sit down and spitball.
Interesting, as Jesus becomes human for us, and fully obeys and keeps the Torah (Law) for us, at the same time, because He is for us, He dies as if He hadnāt kept the Law for us, 
cursed, hung on a tree. And yet because He remained perfectly complete to the Law for us, all the way to suffering the consequences of no-Law-keeping, He is understood as simultaneously both the reprobate and elect of God for us in His consubstantial nature as fully God and fully Man for the world. There is a double electionāan election for our reprobation and His elect status for us as the Holy One (for the many) of Israel, wherein through His participation with us, and thus ours with Him, we might experience both His death which is indeed for us (which should have been our death alone), and His resurrected, elevated and ascended life for us, as He has taken us in His Torah obedienceāall the way down and upāto the Right Hand of the Throne of the Father. Through His vicarious humanity He has graciously given us not just the letter of the Torah, but the spirit of the Torah, which has always already pointed beyond itself to its reality in Jesus Christ.
I take this to be something of a paraphrase of John 3:16 by Karl Barth (even though he doesnāt identify it as such, explicitly):
Basically, the doctrine of the concursus [trans. accompanying] must be as follows. God, the only true God, so loved the world in His election of grace that in fulfilment of the covenant of grace instituted at the creation He willed to become a creature, and did in fact become a creature, in order to be its Saviour. And this same God accepts the creature even apart from the history of the covenant and its fulfilment. He takes it to Himself as such and in general in such sort that He co-operates with it, preceding, accompanying and following all its being and activity, so that all the activity of the creature is primarily and simultaneously and subsequently His own activity, and therefore a part of the actualisation of His own will revealed and triumphant in Jesus Christ.[1]
This might be said to be the supralapsarian backdrop to what finally actualizes in the economy of Godās life for the world in Jesus Christ. Indeed, arenāt such inklings what are required of prima facie teachings as we find in John 3:16. As TF Torrance would say, there is a ādepth dimensionā to Holy Scripture. That is to say, Scripture itself is hung together by something deeper than itself; i.e., than its syntax, philology, grammar, history, so on and so forth. This is what is going on in Barthās development on a doctrine of Godās concursus vis-Ć -vis His creation, us. It is this type of theologizing above, from Barth, that something like the Dominical teaching found in John 3:16 moves and breathes from. Essentially, at bottom, what Barth is saying is that, āthe answer is Jesus, whatās the question?ā
[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/3 Ā§49 [105] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 107.
The ground and continuity of human being is first Godās election to be human being for us in Jesus Christ. It is upon this solid rock that the wick of humanity can never be extinguished. There are some out there who affirm what they call āconditional immortality,ā or what of old was called āannihilationism,ā which affirms the idea that the human being can be thrown into the āouter darknessā of non-existence. That is to say, this position holds that people who reject Christ will indeed suffer āeternal judgmentā by being snuffed out of existence. They contend that human being only has the possibility for immortality, as this is contingent upon the personās response to Godās gift of salvation for them in Jesus Christ. The annihilationist contends that as humans are born in their sins, that in this state they are simply born into a status of vanishment. That is to say, that their beings as human do not have an inherent vouchsafe that keeps them āexistingā from conception into eternity. And yet, as already noted: since the anchor of what it means to be human is universally and archetypally grounded in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, it is my contention that it is impossible for human being, whether on the left or right side, to be vanquished into non-existence at any point.
Karl Barth writes:
On this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, it is decided, and continually decided, that the creature may have permanence and continuity. Without this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, without the continuity in which God abides by His election, by His free but overflowing goodness, and finally, without the election of His grace which is the basis of His goodness, the creature could not and would not continue. But the living and trustworthy basis in God continues, and therefore the creature continues. Because of God it cannot not continue; it cannot perish.[1]
You see Godās humanity stands against non-human being. He has so freely tied Himself to us by His free election to be God with us in Jesus Christ, that it would require that that choice be undone in order for humanity to perish into a final non-existence.
[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/3 Ā§49 [071] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 31.
Christians don’t believe in a chain of being between God and the world. Christians believe that God in-breaks into the world with irruption that this world could never produce. Without God’s gracious and free election to invade this world, this humanity, we would have no access into God’s inner life; which is eternal life. The Christian believes in a life that was first set for them in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ; indeed, a life, a Deus incarnandus (‘God to be incarnate’), that was there ever before this world was this world. Deus incarnatus (‘God incarnate’) is humanity’s only access point into the heavenlies. God, in Himself, in His eternal fellowship of triune interpenetrating self-givenness, has freely deigned that this be so; indeed, in fitting correspondence with His choice to not be God without us, but with us in Jesus Christ.
Pierre Maury was Karl Barthās āFrench connectionā and friend. Without Mauryās thinking and writing on a reformulated Reformed doctrine of predestination, Barthās turn, and 
own treatment of predestination (as exemplified in his Church Dogmatics II/2) may never have happened; at least not in the shape that it did. Here is Maury on a critique of the classical Augustinian inspired doctrine of election/reprobation (especially as that developed within what came to be called Post Reformed orthodox Dogmatics in the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively):
Before we proceed further, there is an important point which must be made clear. If what we have said is true, it is obvious that the decree of electionācall it predestination here, if you willāis not, as classic theology has maintained, from Augustine to Luther Calvin and the orthodox dogmatic theologians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the obscure and impenetrable decision of a divinity who does not, on this point, reveal his designs. It was because they asserted that the absolute decree of the Creator, anterior to any creationāand even to any fall, as the Supralapsarians heldāwas the unknowable secret of an absolute power, that predestination frightened even those who defended it with the most unflagging ardour. There was Calvin, for instance, whom the ālabyrinthsā of this mystery filled with a kind of holy terror. How can it be otherwise, if we know and can know nothing of the motives which lie behind Godās creative activity, if the liberty with which he loves us is replaced by the arbitrary decision of pure omnipotence? How can such a God of the covenant, appear in that eternity (and so in time, in which his purposes are worked out) as anything but a capricious tyrant; not the God of grace but the wielder of a crushing power who is worshipped only in terror? How is one to be sure that it his will to save the lost?
Of course I do not wish for a moment to detract from the mystery of Godās sovereign liberty. He wills to act only in accordance with his good pleasure (Phil. 2.13), but is a good pleasure. His entire revelation tells us so, tirelessly. There is nothing higher than his goodness, nor anterior to it. God loves always, from all eternity. And his purpose, before which, and outside which, there is none other, is to ally his life with the life of men in mutual love. Often, moved by their adoration of the divine majesty, the great predestinarian doctorsāespecially Calvināhave exalted the mystery of the absolute decree. But why have they turned it into a mystery as impenetrable as night, the secret of an opaque God? God does not live and act in the obscurity of eternal darkness, but in lightāāunapproachableā, yes, but light! Darkness and night are, in the Bible, the abode of the Devil, in which he plans and prepares his āworks of darknessā. If there is any tyrannical power that would victimize man, it is he, not the Father āwho hath delivered us from the power of darknessā (Col. 1.13), and āhath called [us] out of darkness into his marvellous lightā (I Peter 2.9).
If it is necessary, then, to maintain the mystery of electionāand it is absolutely necessary, for Godās freedom is the sovereign liberty of the Creator, which our liberty may neither dispute nor judge: āO man, who art thou that repliest against God?ā (Rom. 9.20)āit is only on the basis of knowing and preaching that this mystery is none other than the peace that passes understanding. It is unfathomable because the love of God is unfathomable. And the only act of adoration God expects of us is our wonder at a purpose that overwhelms us.[1]
If the reader is aware of Barthās own reformulation of a Reformed doctrine of predestination, what we just read from Maury should ring familiar to you.
Whether reading Barth, Torrance, Maury et al. the theme remains the same: for them, respectively, to think a doctrine of predestination (election/reprobation) in abstraction from a purposeful ground in Jesus Christ, is to not think a genuinely Christian, and thus biblical doctrine of predestination. This is the crux of it all: i.e., how someone arrives at their relative conclusions in regard to a doctrine of predestination, have directly to do with the theory of revelation (and authority) they affirm. If they are committed to a principled revelational understanding of knowing God, they will look something like Maury on a doctrine of predestination. If not, and they hold to a principled speculative and negative understanding of knowing God, they will look something like Thomas Aquinas, and his respective heirs in the Post Reformed orthodox development.
The issue, ultimately, comes down to a very practical and spiritual one. The way we think God determines all subsequent doctrinal developments. If we think Godās will toward us remains hidden in some sort of āhorrible decreeā of election/reprobation, then we will have good reason to live in an unhealthy fear of Him. If we believe that God has fully Self-revealed Himself for us in the face of Jesus Christ, in a filial relationship of triune love, then we will have a healthy fear and love of the Father. This will latterly shape the way we engage with and treat others; both within the Church and world.
For further reading on Pierre Maury and his theology, especially as that relates to Barthās own developing theology, see: Simon Hattrellās exquisite book: Ā Election, Barth, and the French Connection, 2nd Edition: How Pierre Maury Gave a āDecisive Impetusā to Karl Barthās Doctrine of Election.
[1] Pierre Maury, Predestination and Other Papers (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1960), 35ā6.