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You make excellent points, Legate. Perhaps it is going too far to equate the Second Theme with Thingol's failure to choose love over honor; for a failure it is, one he recognizes in the end.
It seems to me, however, that the Second Theme is perhaps analogous to the Law of the bible's Old Testament and the Third theme is thus analogous to the New Commandment of the bible's New Testament: Honor and Law and such can only reach so high; it is Love that conquers a multitude of evils, casts out fear, suffers many wrongs, etc.
So yes, whereas the Second Theme is not evil, but good, yet it is not enough with which to fight Evil. It can be overwhelmed, it can be mastered, as Tolkien puts it. The Third Theme is the greater and cannot be overcome by Evil, because the Third Theme appears to be essentially about, as you say, Legate, putting others before oneself --> sacrifice --> Love.
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