1 Corinthians 2.14 says,

The man without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God,

for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Many Calvinists take this verse to mean that lost people cannot understand the gospel

and willingly accept it as true unless God regenerates them first.

Some refer to this doctrine as pre-faith regeneration,

which means you must be born again in order to believe the gospel. The Apostle John wrote,

the gospels are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,

and that by believing you may have life in His name. But Calvinistic doctrine says one must be

given new life in order to believe.

So, according to Calvinism, people who reject the gospel are doing so because God is withholding

from them the necessary grace of regeneration, which they need to accept his words as true.

One prominent Calvinistic pastor, Dr. John MacArthur, explains it this way. Unbelievers cannot accept legitimate proof because they are

blind to it. The natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God, for they are

foolishness to him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually

discerned, 1 Corinthians 2.14. Only as the Holy Spirit does his regenerating work, as he opens

the mind, tears off the scales of blindness, gives life, and plants the understanding of God's

revelation. Only then do people believe that the Bible is the Word of God

and trust it.

This is the Calvinistic doctrine, sometimes referred to as total depravity or total inability,

the tea of the famous tulip acrostic.

But does First Corinthians chapters one and 2 support this Calvinistic doctrine?

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