Human wickedness is bound up with supra-personal realities that both pre-exist and are unleashed by sinful acts with renewed energy. Paul Ricoeur notes the ‘mysterious aspect of evil, namely that if anyone of us initiates evil, inaugurates it, each of us also discovers evil, finds it already there, in himself, outside himself, and before himself’.41 What Barth protests against is not that sin is derived, but against the view that its derivation bypasses deliberation and choice, so that it becomes