God is bigger

I'm a fan of the emergent stuff. I like its willingness to say "I don't know" and to leave room for God to do and be more than we expect. And yet, lately, a lot of the stuff I've been reading by emergent folks tends to have this hint of "who are we to put God in a box, even if that box is Jesus?" Who are we to limit God?

Of course, we're in no position to limit God. And yet, again, this sort of thinking didn't sit right with me. And then I came across P.T. Forsyth. He had this to say about God's "limitations".

'The limitation in God is due to God Himself. Self-limitation is one of the infinite powers of Godhead. If God were not personal, if He did not contain the mighty concentrative lines of personality, He would be less than God. He would be a waste, ineffectual force, without form and void. He could, indeed, hardly be force even, which must work in lines. He would be a dim essence, and empty substance, a gaseous abstraction without contents, without feature, interest, or life. He would be without order, for order is limitation. But surely order is the Divine presence in the world, not its absence. Law is His law, not another’s law laid on Him. And personality is law and order in their highest terms. Limitation is no more undivine or incompatible with infinity in the one case than in the other. Divine law, indeed, when we express it in moral terms, what is it other than God’s self-control?' (PT Forsyth, God the Holy Father, 34)