Zachary Esterson: Was Fortunatianus of Aquileia the Anti-Victorinus of Pettau? Their inheritance, convergence and divergence in their regional situations

In composing his commentaries on the Gospels, fourth century Fortunatianus of Aquileia clearly inherited significant material directly from third century Victorinus of neighbouring Pettau. But other material suggests a hermeneutic very different in tradition and style, chiefly one more Origen-istic and culturally Latinzing. Whereas Victorinus tended to innovate on his ante-Nicene predecessors only slightly, Fortunatianus seems to employ an Alexandrian technique more freely. Their greatest difference is perhaps in their treatment of Antichrist and the end-times, but here too there are continuities and anomalies which beg explanation. What, asides the legalization of Christianity, had changed? What was similar and divergent in the respective situations of third century Pannonia and forth century northern Italy? Both authors are concerned with similar penetrations of Jewish rites into the Church and see Jews as equivalently threatening to Christians, albeit in subtly different ways. But Fortunatianus, innovating upon Origen, perhaps unsurprisingly employs a sharper dichotomizing that, post-Constantine, arrogates categories of ‘non-Jewish/gentile’, Greek and Latin culture to that of ‘Church’ and ‘Christian’ and that of their antithesis to ‘Synagogue’ and ‘Jewish’, perhaps under impact of a newly perceived Judeo-pagan threat under Julian (its being unclear precisely when Fortunatianus died), the very incarnation of that prophesied by Victorinus and his predecessors, whose so-called ‘millenarianism’ is otherwise by then so unfashionable. How and why does Fortunatianus appear to address these, and what is one to make of the paradoxes in the so-called ‘Aquileian’ tradition, and do they play a part in the two authors’ respectively divergent fates?

Zachary Esterson: The Quasi Sons of Man and God: recapitulatory, retrojective exegesis of Christ's Resurrection and Ascension in Victorinus of Pettau's In Apocalypsin

In an oft-overlooked allēgoresis of Rev. 1:13, Victorinus of Pettau sees Christ's Sonships of Man and God as not only especially intellectually perceived by scriptural exegesis, after Resurrection and Ascension respectively, but as (only) truly realized or conceived as their so-called "quasi" states, Quasi (≡ similis) filio hominis/dei, (truly) "like / as / as if" their (merely) titular Sonships of Man and God hitherto i.e., paradoxically, more like their former selves than those very selves!
However unlikely, Victorinus' attempt to square heterodox (possibly Jewish quasi-Christian or Ebionite) with solidly Catholic views of Jesus' Messiahship, may yet derive from less-examined features of Irenaeus' concept of ἀνακεφαλαίωσις, recapitulatio, and Tertullian's defence of the Two Comings.
Moreover, the Spirit that communicates these revelations to exegete-prophets following the Resurrection (Act. 2:33) travels backwards from a Teilhardian Omega Point, apparently along an Origenian Road of Time, in retrojective motion, forbidden-by-yet-analogous-to the Alexandrian's solely permitted eschatalogical activity of contemplative retrospection or cognition. Victorinus assumes a chronological Circus Maximus, which the Spirit traverses, accelerating back and forth, interacting with exegete-prophets, problematically while seemingly evading itself's travelling contrariwise i.e. its own very will.
This paper discusses the origins of such views, chiefly in Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen, but also perhaps in Plato and Aristotle, and why they may have died with the commentator of Poetovio.