Confessions of faith

Throughout their history Christians have felt a need to express and define what the Bible and Christian faith are really about.  The earliest Christians had confessions like “Jesus Christ is Lord” (recorded by Paul in Philippians 2:11) or “Jesus is the Christ, Son of God, Savior” (abbreviated in Greek with alphabet that spell the word meaning “fish”).  Little by little longer confessions of faith were developed, often because there was a need to draw a line between Christianity and false teachings.

The Lutheran church has two kinds of written, formulated confessions of faith:  those that we have in common with other churches and those that are specially Lutheran.  Confessions that we share with other churches are called “ecumenical,” and they include the Apostles' Creed (see the end of this page), the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.  The names can be misleading because the Apostles' Creed wasn't written by the apostles of Jesus, and the Athanasian Creed was put together long after Athanasius died.  Parts of the Nicene Creed have been changed after the Council of Nicea (Nikaia) in which it was approved in the year 325 – but in any case these creeds are old confessions of faith, and many churches continue to use them.  They all express faith in God who has made himself known as the Father (Creator), Son (Jesus Christ) and Holy Spirit.

A creed is uskontunnustus in Finnish and trosbekännelse in Swedish.  Among Lutherans in Finland it is the Apostles' Creed that is known by heart and recited most often, but the Nicene Creed is also sometimes used in public worship.

Confessions unique to Lutherans were written in the sixteenth century by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon and other reformers of the church.  These confessional writings and the old ecumenical creeds were put together in 1580 as a collection named Book of Concord.  Luther was a prolific writer, so only a few of his writings are in this collection, namely the Large and Small Catechisms (published in 1529) and the Smalcald Articles (1537).  Melanchthon is best known for the Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana, abbreviated CA, presented to the German emperor in 1530) and the Defense of the Augsburg Confession (Apologia, 1531).  The purpose of these writings was not to replace old confessions nor to invent something new just for Lutherans, but as the Reformation continued, Lutherans became a denomination of their own.  Lutheran confessional writings (tunnustuskirjat in Finnish, bekännelseskrifter in Swedish) were concluded about thirty years after Luther's death by the Formula of Concord (FC).  In Sweden and Finland the Decree of the Uppsala Synod (1593) has also been a confessional writing of sorts.

Those who are ordained as pastors in our church promise to “remain in God’s Holy Word and in the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church based thereon” and that they “will not publicly proclaim or spread nor secretly promote or endorse doctrines which war against it” (translation by Dr. Juhani Forsberg).

In the Internet you can find the Book of Concord in English.

There are many English wordings of the Apostles' Creed.  Here's the one that is used in the English version of our catechism:

I believe in God,
the Father, Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.