Hence, to take it as a middle smells a little fishy. I wasn't convinced by your grammatical argument alone. Third, the entire argument needs to be looked at. It was not only mentioned, a great deal of it was quoted verbatim, including all 4 arguments. In the end, the last argument, appealing to the context, was the one I found convincing.
Many factors go into an exegetical decision.
The language may have been misleading here. Fifth, this points up the need to read an author holistically. I look at the broader context. And I try to give him the benefit of the doubt. I was trying to decide which of two ways to interpret the passage.