Chapter 503 (continued)
remissione et de baptismo parvulorum). Here he introduced into the conversation a term ever after linked with his name: "original sin."21 He went on to give voice to tenacious North African convictions about infant baptism, echoing those articulated 150 years earlier by Cyprian.22
The controversy in those first years was anti-Caelestian, not anti-Pelagian. Augustine remained cautious in confronting Pelagius. The two men shared a wide network of aristocratic friends, and while Augustine may have heard worrisome rumors, he mostly heard high praise. Soon after publishing On the Merits, he came across Pelagius's commentary on Paul's letters. Certain passages troubled him, but Pelagius had subtly worded things and appeared to report rather than assert or defend controversial exegeses. But certain exegeses troubled Augustine enough to append a third volume to On the Merits, an extended postscript in the form of a letter to Marcellinus. Properly speaking, the controversy's second phase began in 414 when two ex-disciples of Pelagius sent Augustine a copy of On Nature. Its ideas confirmed Augustine's earlier suspicions and led to his carefully crafted rebuttal, On Nature and Grace (De natura et gratia). While he quoted Pelagius's treatise repeatedly, he never named its author, hoping, he said, to win him over.
At almost the same moment, at the other end of the Mediterranean, these North African concerns erupted into an international cause célèbre. Augustine would see his ideas thrust onto the world stage, in debates waged in courtrooms and councils and the corridors of imperial power, in venues across North Africa, Palestine, Italy, and Gaul. The controversy took its international turn in Palestine, thanks to the zealous tactlessness of Paul Orosius, a bright, young Spanish presbyter whom Augustine had encouraged to go to the Holy Land to study with Jerome.23 In the summer of 415, at a synod held in Jerusalem, presided over by bishop John of Jerusalem (d. 417), Orosius informed the gathered bishops of Caelestius's condemnation and read out a letter Augustine had written against Pelagian sympathizers in Sicily. Pelagius was summoned, and when asked if he taught what Augustine denounced, he answered: "Who is Augustine to me?" John stepped in: "It is I who am Augustine here." Orosius undiplomatically shot back at John: "If you represent Augustine, follow his faith."24 John invited Orosius to take up the official role of prosecu-
21. Pecc. mer. 1.9.9 (CSEL 60:10–11). Augustine first uses the term "original sin" in 396, in Simpl. 1.1.10 and 11 (CCL 44:15–16). See below.
22. Bonner, "Pelagianism and Augustine," 198 ff., stresses the tenacity of these North African theological commitments, for example, Aurelius's remarks at Caelestius's trial (grat. et pecc. or. 2.3.3). Aurelius also pressed Augustine on June 27, 413, to preach in Carthage on the issue. In the sermon (s. 294), Augustine reads at length from Cyprian's ep. 59.5 to Fidus (PL 3:1054).
23. For a helpful reconstruction and analysis of events in Palestine, see Roland Teske, Answer to the Pelagians [I], WSA I/23:319–35 and 385–402; also Bonner, St. Augustine, 332–39.
24. Orosius, Liber apologeticus 3 (CSEL 5:607–8).