Faith as the foundation of speech, and the meaning of 'every man is a liar'

In general, a soul that comes to speech without faith will babble in vain, driving its words forward with nothing beneath them. The beginning of rational discourse, then, is faith firmly established in the heart of the speaker. Next, he goes on to show how it is possible for us to accomplish faith perfectly, saying: “I was humbled greatly.” For the one who has not humbled his own mind, who does not say in imitation of the Apostle, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have yet laid hold of it” (Philippians 3:13), but instead pondering the comprehension of God’s essence, measuring out what cannot be reached with his own reasoning, and reckoning God to be only as great as his reasoning has encompassed—in short, the one who makes his own mind the measure of all things, not reckoning that it is easier to measure out the whole sea with a small cup than for the human mind to grasp the unutterable majesty of God—such a person is puffed up in vain and lifted up by the emptiness of his own mind. He cannot say, “I believed, therefore I spoke,” because he cannot add what follows: “I was humbled greatly.” For he lives with conceit and boastfulness, and exults in empty words, because he does not possess the strength that comes from faith.

Then he does not humble himself alone, but with himself all humanity that is akin to him and shares his nature. “I said in my ecstasy,” he says, “Every man is a liar” (Psalm 115:2 LXX; Psalm 116:11 Hebrew). So the one who is not helped by faith, but comes to speech from his own resources, trusting in human preparations for grasping the truth, is a liar, falling far short of the truth. And he says he spoke this word in ecstasy. What is the ecstasy? Either that, after looking around at human nature and searching carefully whether there is any truth among human beings, he could find it nowhere without help from God, and being struck with amazement at the strangeness of the matter, he cried out, “Every man is a liar.” Or it was in that ecstasy which he feigned before Achish, pretending epilepsy and derangement, when he saw that he had come to the necessity of lying about himself and inventing things that were not, in order to escape the danger from the enemies—then he said, “Every man is a liar.” Even if not by choice, nor for the harm of neighbors, still in every case he took refuge in lying because of some circumstantial causes.

The Prophet does not, however, fall into his own trap, as some of the sophistical arguers try to refute him, saying that the Prophet has fallen into the refutation by reversal. For if every man is a liar, and David is also a man, then clearly he too was a liar. And if he was a liar, he must not be believed in what he declares. But if this statement is not true, and not every man is a liar, then we will release David from the charge of lying. And if he does not lie, let us believe him in what he declares; but by believing him, we will again be driven around into the necessity of disbelieving. So if David speaks truth, he dissolves his own statement, since he is a man and does not lie. But if he lies, he has from that very fact the reason not to be believed—for who will pay attention to a liar? So since he once declared that every man is a liar, let David lie in order to confirm his statement; or if he himself speaks truth, he has destroyed his own declaration.