When Everything is Permitted by Wolfhart Pannenberg, reprinted with permission from First Things Journal, February 1998, No. 80, pp. 26-30.  Pannenberg writes, "It may well be the case that the moral crisis of modern secular societies is attributable to the fact that God is no longer publicly recognized as the source of moral norms...Historical experience demonstrates that, for societies and for individuals, the autonomy of reason cannot successfully replace the authority of God. In this respect Rousseau is fully vindicated.  As is Dostoevsky, whose Ivan Karamazov observed that, without God, "everything is permitted."  Pannenberg's solution to the moral dilemma begins with a renewal of Christian morality in the Christian community.  Mar/Apr 1998 Theology Matters p. 8