58 assuming the humanity of Jesus for God's own, that deification does not happen all at once, but over the course of Jesus' life and death. God's making the humanity of Jesus God's own is an all or nothing affair, but what is assumed and its effects on human life are not. As. Jesus' life and death proceed, all these various happenings are made part of God's assumption of the human, with purifying, healing, and perfecting effects. Each aspect of Jesus' life and death, moreover, is purified, healed and elevated over the course of time, in a process that involves conflict and struggle with the sinful conditions of its existence. The purification and elevation of the human in Christ is a historical process because the humanity assumed by the Word is historical. 59 By his intimate union with humanity, [Christ] shared all the marks of our nature. He was born, reared, grew up, and went so far as even to taste death. . . . [I]t was in keeping with his intimate union with our nature that he should be united with us in all our characteristics.... That is why, in view of the fact that our life is bounded by two extremities (I mean its beginning and end), the power which amends our nature had to reach to both points. It had to touch the beginning and to extend to the end, covering all that lies in between."" The modern affirmation of the essentially historical character of human life simply makes this all the clearer, though the recognition of such an historical nature is also sometimes strongly affirmed in the very early church, notably by Gregory of Nyssa. The purification and elevation of the human in Christ is a conflictual process because the humanity assumed by the Word suffers from the effects of sin." Contrary to what is commonly affirmed in the medieval period, with Karl Barth and some early church fathers (Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus), one must say that the Word assumes, not a perfect humanity (if the humanity See, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, 'An Address on Religious Instruction,' 303-4; and Athanasius, Four Discourses against the Arians,' 422. See also Hilary of Poitiers, ‘On the Trinity, 213-17, for the way at least the body of Jesus is sanctified over time, though not in any linear way. 39 See John Meyendorff, ‘Christ's Humanity: The Paschal Mystery, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 31, no. 1 (1987): 22–30; Rahner, 'Current Problems in Christology": "The Logos did not merely become (statically) man in Christ; he assumed a human history' (167); and Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 140. Gregory of Nyssa, 'An Address on Religious Instruction,* 304. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 166–8, 197. 27 JESUS, HUMANITY AND THE TRINITY assumed were already perfect, what would be the soteriological point of assuming it?), but humanity suffering the effects of sin - tempted, anxious before death, surrounded by sufferings of all kinds, in social conditions of exclusion and political conflict. 2 The Word's assuming or bearing of all this in Christ means a fight with it, a fight whose success is assured by that very unity of the human with the Word, but