In 2017, the Church of Sweden elected a new service-book which is mandatory for the liturgy in the ceremonies. This undergraduate thesis aims to analyze the prayers of forgiveness to recognize the hamartiology, understandings of sin, in the Church of Sweden. The main question asked was: "In the moment of Prayers of forgiveness in the handbook of the Church of Sweden, which different ideas of sin and forgiveness can be identified?". A total of eight prayers of forgiveness were analyzed with three sub-questions: (A) How is the sin understood? (B) How does God relate to sin? (C) To the person praying, what change does the prayer aim to affect? The theories in this paper were based on contemporary, Lutheran theology, with the origins from the Church of Sweden, linked to sin and forgiveness. The prayers were compared with different understandings of the original sin (ontological sin, and structural sin) and the actual sin (subjective sin and objective sin). The result of the thesis revealed that the actual sins were the most common in the prayers of forgiveness. The structural sin can be understood as the original sin as being structures one is born into. As shown in the first two prayers, named B1 and B2 in this paper, the idea of an ontological sin was identified in various prayers, such as B4, B5, and B8. The B3, B6, and B7 prayers were lacking a direct link to the original sin and were instead directed towards a God described as loving and merciful. The subjective sin was expressed through the encouragement of self-reflection in B3 and B6. The objective sin was identified in most of the prayers.

The aim of this essay is first and foremost to clarify which kind of different answers there are to identify within an evangelical-lutheran tradition considering what a person should confess and take responsibility for as their sin and guilt. Secondly this essay aims to suggest the most plausible one. This essay thematically present four different figures of ideas that answers to the question of what a person should confess as their sin and guilt. These figures are: 1) To confess the ontological state of guilt 2) To confess the subjective sin and guilt 3) To confess the objective sin and guilt 4) To confess participation in the structural sin and guilt. These four different views of what to confess have been tested through three different criterias: a criteria of theology - by testing the coherence with an evangelical-lutheran tradition, a criteria of pastoral psychology - by testing the correspondence with theories in pastoral psychology and a criteria of good consequences - to see if the views of what to confess have a liberating effect on an individual and collective level. After testing these different views of what to confess my conclusion is that the most valid one is “ to confess our objective sin and guilt” because it expresses the violation of the “relation”. Some of the other views may serve as a good explanation for the human “situation”, but are not appropriate to confess as guilt.