The Puzzle of Prayers of Thanksgiving and Praise

The fact that God is worthy of thanks and praise for his good acts underwrites the rationality of our practice of offering prayers of thanksgiving and praise for those acts.Here, however, a puzzle arises: If God is essentially unsurpassably good, then he is unable to do something worse in place of his good acts, and if God is unable to do something worse in place of them, then he is not worthy of thanks and praise for performing them.So, if God is essentially unsurpassably good, then he is not worthy of praise and thanks for his good acts.In this paper, I argue that, given mundane incompatibilist assumptions, there is no solution to this puzzle.Thus, on those assumptions, our practice of offering prayers of thanksgiving and praise is rational only if God is not essentially unsurpassably good. CelebrantThe Lord be with you. PeopleAnd also with you. CelebrantLift up your hearts. PeopleWe lift them to the Lord. CelebrantLet us give