Thanks, Frans, Paul and Scott for your help.
It is John Duns Scotus who at one point suggests that a thing is good
because God wills it, rather than God willing it because it is good (his
Opus Parisiense or Reportata Pariensia, IV, xlvi, q.4, n.8). But this
suggestion that God could alter the precepts of morality by an act of his
omnipotent will is contrary to much else Scotus says about morality, writes
CRS Harris in Duns Scotus (OUP, 1927).
I'm writing a book on Reinhold Niebuhr as a pragmatic just war thinker and
wanted Scotus simply as an example of how to avoid a problem faced by both
consequentialist and legalist approaches to morality. That problem is human
non-omniscience. We *think* a bad means will bring about a good end, and we
justify it on that basis. But we do not know for sure that the bad means
will really bring about the good end.
If the good end comes about (ending WW2) then the bad means (Hiroshima) may
be justified. If no good results, then we have simply done bad (Dresden).
Only a wholly non-consequential morality (based on revelation or biblical
literalism) can avoid this problem of uncertainty about the effects of our
actions.
Thanks again,
Colm
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