It's strange how vehemently set against instrumentalist or teleological reasoning the Christian Anglophone world is today when for centuries, until the 19th, teleological or ends oriented reasoning was the hallmark of Christian academic thinking. Today, "the ends do not justify the means" is virtually a moral axiom in the Anglo-American mind, yet for centuries the denial of all teleology or ends reasoning was considered the hallmark of the denial of divinity or the divine mind.
Consider the following passage from George Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge:
First, It is plain Philosophers amuse themselves in vain, when they inquire for any natural efficient Cause, distinct from a Mind or Spirit. Secondly, Considering the whole Creation is the Workmanship of a wise and good Agent, it should seem to become Philosophers, to employ their Thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about the final Causes of Things: And I must confess, I see no reason, why pointing out the various Ends, to which natural Things are adapted, and for which they were originally with unspeakable Wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good way of accounting for them, and altogether worthy a Philosopher.
Agency, whether human or divine, is intrinsically linked to teleology acting for certain ends or purpose. The idea of things which just "work in themselves" or mechanicistically was associated with deism, purposeful ends oriented agency was evidence of divinity. Even with the advent of Newtonian Mechanics many pious physicists and mathematicians like Euler would pioneer of the calculus of variantions which reformulated Newtonian laws according to teleological concepts, the "least action principle" which is the idea that nature will take the "least action" path, a teleological idea.
In the field of ethics and morality, the heyday of Anglican Latitudinarianism was also, which we today think odd, associated with theological utilitarianism, another tradition unjustly reviled by many Christian thinkers today who confuse it with mere hedonism. But it wasn't even too long ago when utlitarianism was just called "teleological ethics", it was obvious to celebrated figures like William Paley and George Berkeley that rules should be formulated towards the goal of the maximum of "happiness", whatever happiness means which is not to be confused with mere pleasure or absence of pain.
This was a vision of life and the world which was irreducibly and bracingly eschatological, all things moving towards their end in God, all our actions oriented towards our final destination.
Today, it's oddly the continental Europeans legal tradition which has maintained the "purposive" interpetation of the law, for most of the Anglosphere, everything is for itself, teleology was anathema, "justifying the means by their ends" is vile Machievellian reasoning. But not too long ago, it was considered Christian common sense. Perhaps this is simply another instance of a Nietzchean point that the Anglos had long ago replaced God with morality, and thereby cut off the final destination in God for all ethical actions.