Kierkegaard on Doubt (of the Ascension)

“So some have doubted.  But then in turn there were some who sought to refute doubt with reasons.  As a matter of fact, the connection was actually this: first of all they tried to demonstrate the truth of Christianity with reasons or by advancing reasons in relations to Christianity.  And the reasons fostered doubt and doubt became the stronger.  The demonstration of Christianity really lies in imitation.  This was taken away.  Then the need for “reasons” was felt, but these reasons, or that there are reasons, are already a kind of doubt — and thus doubt arose and lived on reasons.  It was not observed that the more reasons one advances, the more one nourishes doubt and the stronger it becomes, that offering doubt reasons in order to kill it is just like offering the tasty food it likes best of all to a hungry monster one wishes to eliminate.  No, one must not offer reasons to doubt — at least not if one’s intention is to kill it — but one must do as Luther did, order it to shut its mouth, and to that end keep quiet and offer no reasons….those whose lives are marked by imitation have not doubted….because their lives were too strenuous, too much expended in daily sufferings to be able to sit in idleness keeping company with reasons and doubt, playing evens or odds.”

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, translated Hong and Hong, pg. 68