Rasputin and Romans 6

In his Tyndale series Romans commentary, F. F. Bruce offers the following colorful, if also sad, illustration as he discusses Rom 6:

A notable historical instance [of a tendency to read Paul as advocating antinomianism] may be seen in the Russian monk Rasputin, the evil genius of the Romanov family in its last years of power. Rasputin taught and exemplified the doctrine of salvation through repeated experiences of sin and repentance; he held that, as those who sin most require most forgiveness, a sinner who continues to sin with abandon enjoys, each time he repents, more of God’s forgiving grace than any ordinary sinner.¹

A reported discussion between Rasputin and one Vera Zhukovskaya expresses a similar example of Rasputin’s saddening and disturbingly illogical “evil genius” on this topic.²

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1. Bruce, Romans (affiliate disclosure), 134. ↩

2. Radzinsky, Rasputin File (affiliate disclosure), 240. ↩