c." (Frank 2, 111.) Stancarus argued: "Christ is one God with
the Father and the Holy Spirit. Apart from the three personal properties
of '_paternitas, filiatio, and spiratio passiva_' the three divine
persons are absolutely identical in their being and operation. Their
work is the sending of the Mediator, whose divine nature itself, in an
active way, participates in this sending; hence only the human nature of
the God-man is sent, and only the human nature of the Mediator acts in a
reconciling way. Men are reconciled by Christ's death on the cross; but
the blood shed on the cross and death are peculiar to the human nature,
not to the divine nature; hence we are reconciled by the human nature of
Christ only, and not by His divine nature (_ergo per naturam humanam
Christi tantum sumus reconciliati et non per divinam_)." (Schluesselburg
9, 216ff.)

Consistently, the Stancarian doctrine destroys both the unity of the
person of Christ and the sufficiency of His atonement. It not only
corrupts the doctrine of the infinite and truly redeeming value of the
obedience of the God-man, but also denies the personal union of the
divine and human natures in Christ. For if the divine nature is excluded
from the work of Christ, then it must be excluded also from His person,
since works are always acts of a person. And if it was a mere human
nature that died for us, then the price of our redemption is altogether
inadequate, and we are not redeemed, as Luther so earnestly emphasized
against Zwingli. (CONC. TRIGL. 1028, 44.) True, Stancarus protested:
"Christ is Mediator according to the human nature only; this exclusive
'only' does not exclude the divine nature from the person of Christ, but
from His office as Mediator." (Frank 2, 111.) However, just this was
Luther's contention, that Christ is our Mediator also according to His
divine nature, and that the denial of this truth both invalidates His
satisfaction and divides His person.

The Third Article of the _Formula of Concord_, therefore, rejects the
error of Stancarus as well as that of Osiander. Against the latter it
maintains that the active and passive obedience of Christ is our
righteousness before God: and over against the former, that this
obedience was the act of the entire person of Christ, and not of His
human nature alone. We read: "In opposition to both these parties
[Osiander and Stancarus] it has been unanimously taught by the other
teachers of the _Augsburg Confession_