How do you understand the word "ontological"?

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Lepanto

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I’ve heard too many meanings for this word.

How do you understand its meaning? If possible, please use it in a sentence.
 
It means what something is in itself, it’s being.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote on the ontology of the Eucharist, that bread and wine are transubstantially changed into the Body and Blood of Christ.
 
In a discussion with a Mormon once, he quoted the bible verse that says ‘you must all be perfect, as the heavenly father is perfect.’ His point was that we could become gods.

My response was that “I think that verse refers to moral perfection, not ontological perfection.” Only God is, or can be, ontologically perfect.
 
Would one then say of an ontological attribute that it is part of the manner of being or existence enjoyed by the subject?
 
Ontological refers to that which pertains to being. I would expand that to say that it means, that which pertains to the essence of a being.

Ontologically my “being-ness” is to be human. I can never be ontologically perfect because I can never possess the perfections which pertain only to the divine nature–the attributes of God, each of which not only pertains to His nature but is identical with it.

But my beingness or nature is different than that of a dog or a parrot or an amoeba or an angel. We are talking about attributes which go to the essence of one’s nature.
 
Good definitions. I don’t know that I can improve upon them, but I just had to post something in a thread that uses the word “ontological” in the title! 😃 😛

I particularly like St. Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God!
 
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