...”The notion that good ends justify evil means is a moral theory condemned”...
Ummm...
God command the extermination/genocide of the Canaanites, women and children included...... God did not order the extermination of these people to be cruel, but rather to prevent even greater evil from occurring in the future.
In 1 Samuel 15:2-3, God commanded Saul and the Israelites,.....
“This is what the LORD Almighty says:..... ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
God knew what the results would be if Israel did not completely eradicate the Amalekites. If Israel did not carry out God’s orders, the Amalekites would come back to “haunt” the Israelites again and again.
God ordered similar things when the Israelites were invading the promised land.... (Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:6; 20:16-18)
....to the Canaanites, God commanded,...... “However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you...... Otherwise,..... they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God” .....(Deuteronomy 20:16-18).
1. In the OT, God says over 15 times that He "hates" the shedding of innocent blood. He calls it an abomination. Do you deny that?
2. Even if it is argued that God is the Master of life and death, and has the authority to order people to commit the abomination of murder in specific instances (as in the case of ordering Abraham to kill Isaac, or the genocide of the Amalekites or the Midianites)this was an exception, not a principle.
God commanded these killings, not as a general law (as if to say, "In war, you must always kill all the women and children" or even a general tolerance ("In war, you 'may' intentionally or indiscrimiantely kill the women and children" but as a specific command n a specific instance. They were never extended in the sense of a general rule.
Even more to the point, God did not order Harry S. Truman to kill all the people in Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
3. With the coming of Christ, God has established a new covenant with mankind (Jeremiah 31:31-34, Luke 22:20, 1 Corinthians 11:25, Hebrews 8:8-13, 9:11-15). Jesus and His apostles gave us a radically new understanding of the true intent of the Old Testament Law; they brought a new era of the rule of love for all people and spiritual truth instead of rule by law (Luke 10:25-28, John 13:34-35, Ephesians 2:14-18).
There is not one syllable in the example or the precepts of Jesus Christ that would justify the intentional targeting of noncombatants or the slaughter of blameless people. If there were, there could be no commandment against murder (one of the Big Ten) because murder is, by definition, an unjust killing, a killing of a person who has not merited a capital sentence.
"Why not say--as some slanderously claim that we say--"Let us do evil that good may result"? Their condemnation is just!"