Shepherding According to God: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Pauline Pastoral Theology in Witness Lee’s Reading

Contemporary pastoral theology has increasingly absorbed the categories and methods of counseling psychology, yet this turn often leaves unexplained the theological ontology of the pastoral caregiver. This article develops a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue between Pauline theology, counseling psychology, and the pastoral theology of Witness Lee (1905–1997), proposing an ontological-participatory account of Christian shepherding. After surveying the therapeutic turn and major psychology–Christianity integration models, the study examines Lee’s reading of Paul’s pastoral pattern—nursing mother, exhorting father, and slave of Christ—and his interpretation of “shepherding according to God” (κατὰ Θεόν) in 1 Peter 5:2 as participation in the life, nature, and shepherding activity of the Triune God. Building on Lee’s doctrine of practical deification—believers becoming “God in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead”—this article argues that pastoral care is mediated through persons constituted with Christ who minister divine life through cherishing, nourishing, and mutual shepherding. Placed into dialogue with counseling psychology, this vision yields convergences in empathy, presence, and holistic care, alongside tensions concerning anthropology and the telos of human transformation. The article offers an ontological-participatory framework that situates the descriptive achievements of the human sciences within a richer Pauline vision of participation in the Triune God’s ongoing shepherding ministry.