Baptism and the Great Flood Prayer

In 1523, Martin Luther translated the baptismal form out of Latin and into German. He presented the product of his labor, the Baptismal Booklet (or Taufbüchlein), for use in the church. Suddenly, Reformation liturgy became intelligible. True, it was not a full revision of the liturgy. Luther’s own attempt at that, which did not come until late 1525, built on some earlier suggestions he had made the year before. Nor was it even a substantial revision of the Latin baptismal rite, which Luther undertook only in 1526. The early Reformers often had to “hasten slowly” (festina lente). But it did offer a liturgical text that made possible the celebration of the sacrament of baptism in the common language of the people. More than that, it contained the Great Flood Prayer (or Sindtflutgebet), beloved and still used by numerous confessional traditions even today. “Viewed in terms of biblical imagery, liturgical history, and pastoral sensitivity,” confirmed Hughes Oliphant Old, “Luther’s prayer is a masterpiece.”

Scholars have repeatedly pounced on Luther’s Baptismal Booklet like archaeologists at the dig site. With backhoe and trowel, they have tried to excavate conceivable medieval sources for the liturgical text and patristic sources for the Great Flood Prayer itself: the 1497 Latin rite for the archdiocese of Magdeburg, the 1502 agenda for the diocese of Ermland, the writings of Saint Augustine, the works of Isidore of Seville, the treatises of Rupert of Deutz, and still possibly more. This behavior is understandable, because some of the changes Luther initially made to the baptismal form can seem peculiar, both in light of standard liturgical books and Luther’s later accomplishments.

First, Luther removed some, but not all, of the exorcisms practiced in baptism. Medieval exorcisms had come to replace patristic prayers of confession and repentance. Those that Luther cut significantly shortened the baptismal service. Second, he omitted the medieval admonition to godparents, seemingly to declutter the service. He also omitted the medieval catechetical instruction, such as use of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, or the Ave Maria as part of the baptismal service, but he retained the Lord’s Prayer because he understood the Lord’s Prayer at the time as a prayer for the blessing of the child. The third change came by addition when Luther inserted the following words:

Almighty eternal God, who according to thy righteous judgment didst condemn the unbelieving world through the flood and in thy great mercy didst preserve believing Noah and his family, and who didst drown hardhearted Pharaoh with all his host in the Red Sea and didst lead thy people Israel through the same on dry ground, thereby prefiguring this bath of thy baptism, and who through the baptism of thy dear Child, our Lord Jesus Christ, hast consecrated and set apart the Jordan and all water as a salutary flood and a rich and full washing away of sins: We pray through the same thy groundless mercy that thou wilt graciously behold this N. and bless him with true faith in the spirit so that by means of this saving flood all that has been born in him from Adam and which he himself has added thereto may be drowned in him and engulfed, and that he may be sundered from the number of the unbelieving, preserved dry and secure in the holy ark of Christendom, serve thy name at all times fervent in spirit and joyful in hope, so that with all believers he may be made worthy to attain eternal life according to thy promise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Long and comprehensive, the prayer both replaced and recast some of the standard Latin baptismal prayers, such as Deus patrum nostrorum and Deus Abraham, with a greater sense of biblical typology as appropriate to baptism and a richer account of Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, including 1 Peter 3:20–21 on Noah and the Flood and 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 on Israel’s baptism through the Red Sea. In liturgical-theological terms, the remembrance of God’s mighty deeds in history or “anamnesis” is employed to great effect.

The inclusion of the Great Flood Prayer also added balance to the service. Precisely because Luther understood baptism to principally be the work of God, who makes life-giving promises to the one baptized, the invocation or “epiclesis” in the baptismal form finds real meaning. Luther instructed the participants: “See to it, therefore, that you are present in true faith, listen to God’s Word, and earnestly join in prayer.” He also admonished the minister to say the prayer “very clearly and slowly” so that all parishioners could hear, understand, and pray in their hearts along with him, “carrying the little child’s need before God most earnestly.” Baptism was personal but not private.

In 1526, Luther revised the baptismal form again. Now the prayer took greater precedence over the exorcisms, which focused increasingly on the Christian’s struggle against the devil in spiritual matters. As Luther put it in the Small Catechism of 1529, “The old person in us (Adam) with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned through daily sorrow for sin and repentance, and that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” Because it was God who made promises in the sacrament, baptism was to be remembered and embraced each day of the believer’s earthly pilgrimage to provide comfort amid temptation and despair as it reminded one of God’s effective word by which he brings sinners from death to life. Not only did Luther regularly say “Remember your baptism!” but also that there is “no greater jewel” in the Christian life.

The afterlife of the Great Flood Prayer is also remarkable. Use of the prayer spread as the implementation of Lutheran church orders and liturgical forms carried it across central Europe. But it was not limited to German Lutherans. The prayer quickly entered the liturgies of Scandinavian Lutherans. It was amended by Leo Jud and Huldrych Zwingli for use in Switzerland, with the new version leaving out reference to Christ’s baptism in the Jordan or the consecration of baptismal waters. The Reformed liturgy in the Netherlands also adapted Luther’s prayer by incorporating into it an explicit understanding of the sacrament as covenantal sign and seal. In England, Thomas Cranmer inserted part of the prayer into the order for baptism in the Book of Common Prayer. As a result, the prayer has found a home nearly across the globe. These liturgical forms reworked the prayer, but each instance of reception preserved the central features: the prominence of the biblical types of Noah and his family in the ark and Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the strong accent on God as the one who works in the sacrament, and the importance of calling upon the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit for aid, both in that moment of the service and in every moment of the life of the one baptized.

Finally, the Great Flood Prayer arguably made an implicit appearance at the end of Luther’s life, twenty-three years after he had composed it. In late January 1546, Luther travelled to Eisleben to resolve an inheritance dispute between two brothers in the Mansfeld Count family. On the way he stopped in Halle, where a sudden thaw had broken the winter ice on the Saale River and caused the river to flood its banks. Writing about the flood to his wife, Katie von Bora, Luther couldn’t resist a joke that personified the rushing waters as an angry Anabaptist who “threatened to baptize us again.” The traveling party escaped the deluge, but Luther soon took ill. From Eisleben he wrote home to reassure his wife:

You, dear Katie, go read John and the Small Catechism, about which you once said, “Everything in this book has been said about me.” For you prefer to worry about me instead of letting God worry, as if he were not almighty and could not create ten Doctor Martins, should the old one drown in the Saale. . . . Free me from your worries. I have a caretaker who is better than you and all the angels; he lies in the cradle and rests on a virgin’s bosom and yet, nevertheless, he sits at the right hand of God, the almighty Father.

The Reformer died a few weeks later. Luther’s comments about the flood in Halle demonstrate an abiding confidence that the same God who had preserved Noah and Israel in the baptismal waters of judgment had also acted for him, personally, in the Lord Jesus Christ, guaranteeing the believer not a watery grave but a passageway to Zion on dry ground. He remembered his baptism.