Granted Rasputin, as “The Mad Monk”, might not be the first historical personage one would want to appropriate in defense of universalism; he still presents sort of an enigma to Christianity - a licentiousness healer who, despite his obvious corruption and corrupting, was nonetheless a deeply faithful and intense man of God. Moreover, his theology, though controversial, seemed to be universalist imo, or at least tending that way.
Rasputin was reputedly a Khlyst: an offshoot of the Orthodox who believed, just as God became incarnate in Christ, that Christ was incarnate in all men and women. A corollary of this, to the Khlysty, was that nothing we do in Adam, our in our human selves, can warrant us salvation. Salvation and goodness are wholly other than our human selves on this teaching; therefore (though certainly not all the Khlysty practices can be strictly logically deducted from this insight), pride and hypocrisy are worse sins than indulgence. So, trying to free the Christ from our human selves, the Khlysty alternated in extreme asceticism (Rasputin evidently would go to a swamp, for example, all day and eat nothing and pray) to extreme indulgence (drunkenness, debauchery, free love, etc.)
Rasputin was a “holy fool” - someone who lived conspicuously oppositely than others, to demonstrate the pretentiousness and insufficiency of conventional morality. Naturally, this “holy foolery” could become justification for much that was wrong (and Rasputin no doubt went too far on many occasions, though he admitted that God had used him, “a very broken vessel”); yet, if pride is truly worse than “animal” sins (sex, drunkenness, partying), then one could see how, by being externally controversial, he was revealing our internal spiritual maladies.
Now, I don’t know if Rasputin ever speculated as to whether all people will be saved. However, being an Eastern Christian, he was more likely to believe this. Moreover, his rebuke of pride is quite similar to Christ. In fact, most of the univs. I know claim that this is the essence of Jesus’ preaching - that Christ was deadset against self-righteousness (and Christ was accused of being a drunkard and a glutton). I would never claim that Christ was as debauched as Rasputin, but I also don’t think that Christ was as squeaky clean as tradition paints Him. It just doesn’t fit with the tenor of his ministry.
What do people think (other than me being off my rocker )?