Origen, on Rom 3:4

“But God is true; and every man a liar, as it is written, That thou mayest be justified in thy words, and mayest overcome when thou art judged.”

“If one is to be righteous, one must keep the law in every particular, which is almost impossible for human nature to achieve. Therefore every one is a liar. For since every man is a liar, it follows that on that day when the Lord comes to judgment with men, only he will be justified in what he says. For his words are true in everything, because they are the words of truth.It should also be understood that this saying, i.e., that every man is a liar, is taken from Psalm 116:11 … Now someone might object that if all men are liars, then Paul too, being a man, will also be a liar! But in that case David, who originally said it, would also be a liar, and what he said would be false, just because he was a liar.… The whole statement would thus become nonsense, which is absurd!”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.