Can a smart, highly educated person understand the things of God without the Holy Spirit?

Les explains that the things of God know no man, not even the most intellectual, brilliant, or highly educated person, unless the Spirit reveals it. The unsaved person cannot comprehend these things; they are a closed book. But once someone enters into a salvation experience and is born again by the Spirit of God, the book opens up. He notes that students have told him they just do not get what he is driving at, and he tells them that once they come to know the Lord, they will not have that problem. He also describes people writing or calling that it is like a huge light bulb turned on—but he says he did not turn it on, the Spirit did. In verse 12, Paul says “we have received, not the spirit of the world,” but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. Paul did not put them through grade school, high school, and college; he taught the preaching of the cross, Christ crucified and risen from the dead.