He follows the declaration of
Jesus’s baptism with a purpose clause. Jesus was baptized “in order that he
might cleanse the water by his suffering” (ινα τω παθει το υδωρ καθαριση; Eph.
18.2). The precise relationship between the baptism and the purpose clause is
far from clear in Eph. 18.2. If Jesus’s baptism occurred for the purpose
of cleaning the water through his suffering, this account would run into an
obvious chronological challenge since the baptism occurred prior to the
suffering. Ignatius may see Jesus’s baptism and passion as united by the act of
Jesus’s obedience. If so, Jesus’s obedience led him both to be baptized and to
suffer so that the waters were cleansed by Jesus’s dual acts of submission to
the Father’s will. Yet although the unity of Jesus’s baptism and passion is
strongly intimated in Eph. 18.2, it may be better to find the specific link in
the power of Jesus’s passion to make his baptismal purification efficacious.
Jesus’s death on the cross purifies the water and thereby marks his baptism as
a significant event for Ignatius and the Ephesians to recall. While the precise
referent of the water is unclear, Jesus’s baptism was interpreted later in the
second century with reference to the presence of the Spirit and the subduing of
the waters of chaos (Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 7; Tertullian, Adv.
Jud. 8.14). Yet it may be best to leave open the specific nature of the
connection between the baptism and passion in Eph. 18.2. Ignatius links
the baptism and passion together with refence to Jesus’s embodiment so that
incarnation, purification, and crucifixion are intimately associated with
baptism. (Jonathon Lookadoo, The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch [Studies
in Early Christology; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023], 36-37)
