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Regardless of how much can be garnered from Tolkien's Legendarium, Letters, and authorized Biography, attempting to psychologize the nature of his beliefs runs the inevitable risk of saying more about oneself than one says about Tolkien. Very astute points have been made, but I still find the commentary of Lalwendė and davem, for example, more revelatory about their own beliefs than those of Tolkien. Lalwendė, your own comments are very well qualified by a host of "seems" and "appears", as well as the admittance that I refer to above. Nevertheless, we cannot help but be inaccurate in our attempted portrayal of Tolkien's beliefs, at least from a psychological frame of reference. I imagine that a theological frame of reference may serve a little better, but I don't think very many people would be satisifed with that, in so much as it would either require a Roman Catholic (or at least Christian) context, or a non-RCC context that would be by turns just as innaccurate as a psychological.
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