According to Professor Jane Chance, an "expert" on Tolkien, ...
Tolkien distinguished between the primary world, which is the world of pain, suffering, turbulence that we live in day-to-day, in which we have finite lives. But he talks about fairy tales as a creation of a secondary world, in which the reader finds escape, consolation, and recovery, where the colors are brighter, as he says, where you are sick and are always healed. It's the recovery of Paradise, if that's what you want to call it. We all long for a secondary world. But he would see the Bible as truth in the primary world.
He would never identify his secondary world as real—the Grey Havens, for instance, as Heaven. He never used Christian terminology to describe his world, because it would be a violation of the secondary-world construction to introduce the primary world into it.
This much I can agree with. Tolkien was creating an alternate reality, and he wanted that reality to exist on its own. Therefore he avoided like the plague anything that smelled of "allegory." He was desperately afraid of being interpreted as a simple allegory like "Animal Farm," when his intention was entirely different.
So when Catholics, like Joseph Pearce and those on this forum, attempt to discover all kinds of hidden Christian symbolism, they are violating the nature of his work, as well as searching for something that doesn't exist.
Granted. And somewhere in my files I have a quote from Tolkien where he says that he did not intend LOTR as a "Christian" work, but because he is a Christian, that is reflected in his work.
Wonderful thoughts introduced there, nyer. They make so much sense. Thanks.