"Kolokotronis, is my grammar right here? Would not stylos be inflected "stylou" together with "Theou" if it were epithet of God?"
Blogger and I went over this posts and posts ago. I think the answer is no. Either reading is grammatically correct, but I do think that if you want it to read the way Blogger does its strained and probably would require a couple of more words. The phrase "the living pillar and foundation (or base) of the truth" doesn't modify God or church in the way a simple adjective would. For example, "God is the pillar and foundation...." or "The pillar and foundation... is God" The case of the noun to which the phrase relates really doesn't matter here. Of course, the lack of any original punctuation certainly doesn't help matters any.
Maybe blogger saved my undoubtedly erudite response?
Actually, I think I just deleted it Kolo. I had a ping list buried in my freep mail to get to and I've received so much mail in regards to this thread that I deleted what I thought was a closed topic.
I believe that your main objection was that God can not be a part of something that He is. Since Christ is the way the truth and the life, your argument was that he couldn't be both the Truth and the Pillar of the truth. He couldn't be part of something he was in full. I argued that he could be because we see him both as The Life and the Lord of Life.
In the end, you indicated that stylistically it would be more natural to see it as the church being the pillar and ground of truth, but that the Greek didn't forbid the other interpretation. Actually, I found my original email to you concerning this issue and this was my question - kinda on the same track as Annalex. "I was wondering if the sentence structure here allows God to be the pillar and ground of the truth or is it the church. My Greek, being rusty, says no since if it were attached to Theos the ending would be masculine like alletheon. Am I correct here or could it be taken either way?" You surprised me by saying stylistically it was smoother to say it was the church, but that the Greek wouldnt' forbid it.