If the term «ecstasy» is applied at all to the giant figures in the succession from Amos to Second Isaiah, I would want to insist on Lindblom's distinction between ecstasy of the absorption type (involving loss of rational control) and that of the concentration type, and a very clear further distinction between the circumspective religion of the
prophets and the more common
ancient Eastern type of introspective, mystical piety.
Among converts to Orthodoxy, for instance, as well as among many cradle Orthodox of a particularly rigorist kind, Dostoevsky is especially honored for having held firmly to Chalcedonian orthodoxy and having introduced the greater world to the figure of Father Zosima, from whom all the light of
Eastern Christian contemplative spirituality shines out; and, more generally, among Christians of many confessions, Dostoevsky is revered as a
prophet, the great Christian anti-Nietzsche, the voice of
ancient Christian truth crying out in the spiritual desert of the modern West.