Before Chalcedon
Hadrumetum, North Africa
Also: Vitalis
⭐ The first to question Augustine were not in Marseilles but in North Africa — González records that Augustine's teaching on grace and predestination was first questioned by a small circle of his own disciples and followers, meaning the monks of Adrumetum; Vitalis, a learned layman of Carthage, raised the same question. That is: the dispute over the initium fidei did not begin in Marseilles. Augustine wrote On Grace and Free Will and On Rebuke and Grace (426/427) to answer the monks of Adrumetum, and answered Vitalis in Letter 217 (c. 426–428); his answer is the crux of his whole position: as Olson gives it, grace, to be truly grace, must be wholly undeserved.
Below: first his own position, then the church’s verdict — kept separate. A rejected opinion keeps equal weight here.
His own position
⭐ He put it to Augustine that all the good a person does depends on God's grace, but that the first step toward salvation — the first step, that of accepting grace (initium fidei) — rests entirely on ourselves, without God's intervention.
Threads he belongs to
Grace and Free Will
Round 1 · The Pelagian Controversy Counterclaim ⭐ The first to question Augustine were his own people in North Africa (the monks of Adrumetum, and Vitalis, a layman of Carthage) — the dispute over the initium fidei did not begin in Marseilles.