Jack Brown Scott ’49

Jack Brown Scott ’49, 83, of Jackson, Miss., went home to be with the Lord June 13, shortly after celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife of 57 years, Eleanor. He was born Jan. 2, 1928, in Greensboro, N.C., to Lacy Allen and Mamie Brown Scott. He married Eleanor Lier Caslick, of Paris, Ky., in 1954. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor Caslick Scott, 1530 Sherman Ave., Jackson, MS 39211; their children, Ann Wiley Scott, Edward Allen Scott (Charlotte Anderson Scott), Caroline Brown Scott, and John Thomas Scott (Holly Roub Scott); seven grandchildren, Antigone Davoulas, Blake and Austin Scott, and Will, Mark, Andrew, and Katie Scott; and his brother, Lacy Pershing Scott. Scott graduated from Davidson with a B.A. in 1949, from Columbia Theological Seminary with an M.Div. in 1952, and from Dropsie University in Philadelphia with a Ph.D. in 1976. He served as a church planting missionary with the Presbyterian church in South Korea from 1952-57, where he met his bride, Eleanor, who was serving as a medical missionary with the Presbyterian church. The two married and had two children while in Korea before returning to the U.S. in 1957; the couple returned to Korea for several weeks in 1979 in honor of their 25th anniversary, and he preached at many of the churches he had helped start in the 1950s. He served as the pastor of the Springfield Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Ky., (1958-60) and the Mt. Salus Presbyterian Church in Clinton, Miss., (1961-66). He was a founding faculty member of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson and served as professor of Old Testament and Hebrew until 1977. From 1977-86 he worked as a writer for the Christian education committee of the Presbyterian Church in America, and in that capacity wrote numerous Biblical study books, including a multivolume adult Biblical education Sunday school series. In addition to his work for the denomination, he wrote several works of Biblical study; his most widely distributed book, God’s Plan Unfolded (1976), has been translated into multiple languages and used by students of the Bible around the world. He also wrote a weekly Sunday school lesson for the Clarion-Ledger for four decades. In 1986 he accepted the position of chair of the department of Biblical studies, Christian ministries, and philosophy at Belhaven University and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1992; upon retirement he was named professor emeritus. After retirement, Scott continued to teach and preach across the southeast and the world, traveling as far as Malaysia in the early 1990s. He was a founding member of the Presbyterian Church in America in 1973 and a longtime member of the Mississippi Valley Presbytery. In 2005 many of his former students and the General Assembly of the PCA honored him with resolutions, honorary dinners, and a festschrift entitled Interpreting and Teaching the Word of Hope. In recent years he and his wife have attended Pear Orchard Presbyterian Church in Ridgeland, where he has taught the Reflector’s Sunday school class on a weekly basis. Scott loved the God of the Bible, his Savior Jesus, and the Word of God, the Bible. He lived his life following the call of Psalm 1:2: “[The man of God’s] delight is in the law of the Lord; and on his law doth he meditate day and night.”