'The moral relativist side of secular liberalism stems from the fact that, as Dostoyevsky noted, if God doesn't exist, anything is permitted. But such universal permisiveness is a recipe for chaos, one which even secularists cannot easily accept. Thus they seek to replace God with another supposed absolute. (Scripture calls this process "idolatry.") That absolute is, in most cases, their own autonomous moral judgment. Hence, there is the dogmatic side of secularism. But when that dogmatism fails, when the secularist's own judgment proves untrustworthy, then they revert to relativism: "Oh well, nobody really knows." Relativism and dogmatism: these are the Scylla and Charybdis of secular liberalism. Strictly speaking, these are inconsistent with one another. But they supplement and need one another. The secularist bounces backwards and forwards from one to the other on a pendulum.'
John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, p.899.
