Jessica Clark

I received a Christian education all the way through, from grade school at a small K-12 Christian school through my masters degree in Christian and Classical Studies at Knox Theological Seminary. To this day, I consider that education at every level to be one of the most foundational aspects of who I am. The value I placed on that education stuck out to me prior to my attending seminary, when in 2020 we saw many changes throughout the world. I felt better equipped to understand where to turn for truth in that tumultuous time due largely in part to a foundation of understanding the importance of worldview, critical thinking, and an acknowledgement that this is God's world. That is my primary aim as an educator: to teach students that this is God's world and we are responsible for learning how to act and interact in light of that fact, that He's shown us how to do so in His Word, and, in my particular field of interest, to lean into the fact that God does communicate to us through a Book, and that reading well helps us better learn to live to His glory.

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy draws from two inspirations. The first is the classical model of education, which I summarize as a "how to think, not what to think" model. Through the stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric students learn how to understand facts and arguments, engage with those arguments, and formulate their own. The model makes critical thinkers and when coupled with an understanding of the sovereignty of God the Creator and the Lordship of Jesus Christ the Redeemer fuels an intellectually satisfying and spiritually mature understanding of the faith. My second inspiration is the benefit of proper expository preaching. Preaching done well is a model for reading well and it shows how to contextualize the objective nature of a text, read symbolism for what it truly points to in light of the objective, and draw right and true applications. This is the same objectives we need to strive for in a literature and writing course.

Statement of Faith

I believe in the historical Christian tradition which centers on the Creator God sending His Son Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, to live a perfect life on behalf of sinful men, die the death man's sin warrants, and rise again to defeat death itself. That faith in Christ is the only means of salvation and it leads to a renewed heart and mind in which the Christian both bears the fruits of the Spirit and submits to the order of creation which God commands.

More specifically, I hold to the theological distinctives of the Reformed Baptist tradition summed up theologically in the doctrines of total depravity (man's enslavement to sin to the extent that left to his own devices he is incapable of choosing to follow God), unconditional election (in which God, in spite of man's inability and lack of merit, draws some to come to saving faith before they have done either good or bad), limited or definite atonement (that Christ's death actually, effectually saved all who will come to Him and only those who will come to Him), irresistible grace (that the call of God upon unconditional election is not something that man can reject once it calls him in time), and the perseverance or preservation of the saints (that God will keep those He calls in the faith unto eternity). The Reformed tradition is also summed up in reference to the life of a believer in the five solas of the Reformation: Christians are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone and ruled in final authority by the Scriptures alone.