From Agent to Witness: Reading Stanley Hauerwas in the Korean Context

I seek to introduce Stanley Hauerwas’s understanding of the church as a communal agent, in order to strengthen Angella Son’s concept of the Christian as an agent of joy. After briefly demonstrating the shortcomings inherent in Son’s concept of an agent of joy, which is based on Karl Barth’s theological anthropology, I show that Son’s notion of agency lacks the sense that it is the community that bears the stories of God in Christ. Individual Christians are called through and to the church, where the distinctive character and story of God, as revealed in Christ, are embodied through the life of both church and Christians.