Fully understanding the word of God and reaching salvation is one and the same.
I disagree; intellectual assent does not guarantee salvation. The Pharasees fully understood God's word but Jesus openly rebuked many of them because of their self-righteousness.
The potential of salvation implies that we are born with just the seed of it in us.
No, after the fall of man we are all born spirtually dead and desperately wicked.
Rom 3:10-12 10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Ephesians 2 doth support the above.