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Originally Posted by Fordie
What I see Tolkien striving for in LotR is not a particular sense of the Creator/God but for a more impersonal sense of the sacred: the landscape of Middle-Earth, the narrative itself, the peoples that we meet, the 'plan' that seems to guide history, the legends and history that the Elves inhabit all give off the odour of sanctity, even perhaps of divinity, without locating that sense within any single form or version of a god.
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Agreed.
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Originally Posted by Fordie again
In the Sil I think that Eru clearly was Tolkien's 'version' of God and was meant to be taken in that light.
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But why would Tolkien not apply the same considerations that you set out at 1 to 4 in your post equally to the Silmarillion? While writing LotR, he anticipated his Silmarillion stories being published. Are you suggesting that he viewed the Silmarillion tales as being for a "specialist market" while LotR would have wider appeal? That does not come across in his Letters, those dealing with the possibility of both works being published, which suggest that he regarded them as intrinsic to each other.