To What End?: A Nondual Christian Ethics of Love, Harm, and Liberation

No finite act carries its moral meaning inside itself.

Christian ethics has spent centuries cataloguing permitted and forbidden acts as though the acts themselves settle the question. Lying is always wrong. Killing is always wrong. Except when it isn't - and every tradition that claims otherwise has built its own exceptions, qualifications, and workarounds, then pretended the system was still absolute.

To What End? dismantles this fiction. Dr. James Foster argues that every act receives its moral meaning from five dimensions - root, context, telos, fruit, and formation - and that the real question of Christian ethics has never been What was done? but Beneficial or harmful, and to what end?

This is not relativism. It is harder than relativism, and harder than the rule-keeping it replaces. A contextual ethic demands more formation, more honesty, and more willingness to see yourself clearly than any catechism ever required. The book provides the grammar for that seeing: a fivefold field of discernment grounded in nondual Christian theology, tested against Buddhist moral reasoning and the tradition of situation ethics, and applied under pressure to the questions that matter most - violence, death, sex, money, truth, obedience, mercy, and punishment.

Drawing on Dionysius, Maximus, Eckhart, and Aquinas (engaged as a worthy opponent), and informed by twenty years of clinical psychology practice, To What End? is written for readers who find pop-spirituality hollow and academic theology lifeless - readers who want rigorous argument from a writer who knows the territory from the inside.

Acts are relative. The End is absolute.