The intensity of the Semi-Pelagian controversy in the Gaulish Church of the fifth and sixth centuries The controversy over Augustine’s predestinarian views was transferred to Gaul after the Vandal conquest of Africa. The Pelagian controversy was characterised by the participation of several prominent figures and the convention of seven councils. The question, however, is why the Semi-Pelagian controversy was of such a different character. The answer is to be found in the context of the participants in the debate: the unique charac- ter of the Gaulish Church, the influence from the monasteries and the distinctive political setting of this region. John Cassian, founder of the monasteries of Marseilles, took the view that God’s grace comes as an answer to the beginning of a good will in the human person and the free will in man can either neg- lect or delight in the grace of God. The same sentiments were soon heard from the monastery on the island of Lerins. The reaction to this stance by Prosper of Aquitaine led to the literary involvement of Augustine. For several decades the bishops of Arles and Vienne attempted to raise their city’s ecclesiastical status above the other cities of Southern Gaul – a phenomenon typical of the public life of this region. In 529 Caesarius, former monk of Lerins, of aristocratic descent and bishop of Arles, held a synod at Orange. This synod affirmed a diluted form of the Augustinian position. All the elements of the character of this controversy can be found in the person of Caesarius who was also mainly responsible for the formulation of the canons of this synod.

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This article proposes that scholarship needs to take into account the intensely missional and practical nature of T.F. Torrance’s life and work. Using primary sources, it isolates mission to the Qiang in China as the area in which personal mission practice and theology coincide. It shows that Torrance’s theology of divine-human communion is rooted in the missio Dei, expressed in the nature of the perichoretic interrelations of the ontological Trinity and the mission of the economic Trinity in the world through the covenant history of Israel. This concept is illustrated practically in the mission history of the Qiang. A holistic concept of mission and theology is therefore at the heart of both Torrance’s biography and theology.

The Platonic milieu is the most significant of the possible milieus that can be attributed to the Proto-Hesychast Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. The present article hypothesizes that Dionysius' master Hierotheus was Isidore of Alexandria, a disciple of the Neoplatonist Proclus, and posits that Dionysius' locale was Egyptian rather than Syrian. Certain aspects of Proclus' influence on him are also taken into account, namely his discussion of evil, his imagery of the statues, his system of henads, and his subscription to theurgy. Dionysius' understanding of theurgy was, however, opposed to that of Proclus' ultimate mentor Porphyry for whom theurgy and virtue were mutually exclusive paths. His description of the vision of Carpos tends to underscore this.