@Susan Sorry if my comments on your question skewed possible answer(er)s. I'm not a fan of the kind of answer provided, but I feel like I fuelled the fire. Will try to offer something appropriate later.

@Davïd No need to apologize. Dick is probably correct that my question was not clear as to what I was looking for. If he knew me he would know that I harass everybody that doesn’t interact directly with the Greek/Hebrew text in answering my questions, but that probably should not be assumed, since many here would not be interested.

And please don’t feel a need to answer that, if that’s what you’re suggesting. At least not for my benefit. I’ve got what I need now.

(This started for me trying to figure out what to do with the narration shift at 7:27, and I intend to get back to that question, but I didn’t feel like I could ‘relativize’ the whole discussion without it being terribly obvious that we needed an authorship question.)

Can anyone explain to me (Rom 3:28): λογιζόμεθα γὰρ δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἄνθρωπον χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου? If δικαιοῦσθαι is passive, shouldn’t the ‘subject' be nominativε - ἄνθρωπος? e.g. 3:20 ἐξ ἔργων νόμου οὐ δικαιωθήσεται πᾶσα σὰρξ... not σάρκα. The only way I see for δικαιοῦσθαι to take an acc. is if it’s middle (subj: God?), but I’ve never seen it translated that way.

@Dan (since you’re sitting in here :P) ^^^ ?

@Susan δικαιοῦσθαι is also the infinitive form (besides being passive), which form takes an accusative, not a nominative, as a subject if it is given a subject different from that of the clause itself. See Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (192).

In this case, the subject is the "we" contained in λογιζόμεθα (Paul, including his readers I believe in joining him in his conclusion), so the shift to the accusative is to make a general statement about any ἄνθρωπον to be justified.

@ScottS oh yeah, I was just being dense. Of course. Thanks!

^^^ My stab at the discussion

@ScottS that's a very helpful contribution even if I'm having trouble deciding how to vote on it, thanks.

I far prefer your choice of words over the current close reasons

Not sure about the degree of overlap between the three, or if (2) is too narrow.

I'm personally entirely comfortable with questions seeking the "meaning of that biblical text" outside "the context from which it was authored" - as long as we insist that a logical chain of thought is established all the way from A to Z

@JackDouglas I'm not sure I see any overlap, as the first one is used when no text is given regarding a question about a subject, the third when a text is sought, and the second when a text has been given.

@JackDouglas Now (2) may be too narrow; but the more specific, yet concise, we can be about what we seek, the better. However, if by "too narrow" you are referring to your next point...

@JackDouglas "Context from which it was authored" has some elasticity to it. That is, by my view, the "context" includes God as the author, whose context is eternal, so what He says in Genesis, He intends not to conflict with what He says in Revelation. My hermeneutic allows for a canonical context view like this, from the perspective of the divine Author. But other hermeneutics cannot allow that, and have to view it purely from a human perspective.

But I believe we (i.e. us at BH.SE) agree that we are seeking what it meant at the time it was written, in order to allow that meaning to speak to us today (yet without explicitly calling for an inferred prescription other than what the text itself states, or at least relegating that to a very minor comment after the interpretation).

^^^ But if that last statement is a misunderstanding of what the goal is, please anyone chime in on their view.