no it doesn't. at some point St Michael cast out the devil, so at some point St Michael changed, and he is still alive. deathlessness and perfect simplicity are not the same thing.
St. Michael is pure spirit - not at all physical. He isn't governed by the restrictions of the physical world.
We are. To suggest otherwise is pseudo-docetism.
Additionally, even in a spiritual sense, the Devil therein underwent death. Michael, in changing (which implies time, which is a strange concept in the spiritual world anyway since it properly belongs to our material world), died. The Michael that existed BEFORE sending the Devil out was a different Michael from the one that existed AFTER.
Death (in the animal, plant, or conceptual sense) is merely a change of states from "being" one way to "being" another way. For animals, this mode of being is purely physical. Their literal material self is absorbed by other animals or lifeforms (like bacteria) and used. For a spirit, undergoing change implies a new state of being (a new experience, for example). However, in both cases, no change of ontology has occured. No TRUE death has taken place.
For the devil, for us when we fall, there is real death. We ontologically disunite from God and become other than what we were.
We need to define death. I'm defining death as "the ending of something." If NOTHING ended pre fall, then how did the days end? How were plants eaten? How was there evening and morning?
What do YOU mean by death? Is it the ending of a life? What is life? Unity to God. Does an animal, without an immortal or rational soul, separate from God by dying? Of course not. In so much as that animal was part of God's creation and the entirety of its material self remains part of that creation, the creation itself remains united to God.
How can a being without an immortal soul which is part of a changing universe BE immortal? That would imply either that they have an immortal soul or that the universe pre-fall was UNCHANGING (co-eternal with God, a heresy).
Were animals created to have an eternal soul (soul here being defined in the Judaic sense of center of being, not in the Platonic sense of being a separate "self" entrapped in a physical body)?
only if the natural biological functions of both the thing being eaten and the eater are the same as today. if not, death is not necessarily involved, especially if all of creation was much more spiritual.
Denial of the physical is pseudo-docetism. The physical was created, and was created GOOD. Generally, when we differentiate the spiritual man from the animal man we are talking about being "subject" to the animal passions or "subject" to Christ.
Again - was there change pre-fall? Then something ended. Were those things physical? Yes. That implies physical change. Physical change = death of some kind. Death, in the biological sense, existed prefall.
Death, in the ultimate sense, did not.
then why is there a physical Resurrection?
Because the soul / spirit is not separate or distinct from the body. Rather, we are as complete a psycho-somatic union as Christ is completely human and Divine. Any resurrection which does not raise the physical is no resurrection at all.
So far as I'm aware, though, there is no doctrine for animals rising from the dead. If their (merely physical) death is so against God's will then they would (each and every one) be raised. That would imply an immortal soul for animals. As they do not have one, we know they will not be raised. The idea of a physical resurrection is not problematic for what I'm saying here.
Also, we are not animals. We were never meant to undergo biological death, but were meant to be immortal. We may change in the spiritual sense (like Michael) growing ever closer into God, but our body was intended to be as immortal as Christ's transfigured body.
Why does all of creation groan and labor with birth pangs for the Second Coming?
As I said above: our spiritual death / separation from God necessarily RENDS creation from its purpose of glorifying God as there is no longer anyone to proclaim that glory (creation declares it, but it has no voice), and though creation is prepared as an offering to God, there is no one to do the offering.
Only Christ fulfilled our priestly role within creation, so creation groans for His second coming and the fulfillment of its purpose. Now, instead of the cycle of life glorifying God's unchanging nature, it is purposeless. An animal's existence is meaningless. Its death merely a death; its matter merely food for another's matter. There is no glory, no point.
But in Christ that point is resurrected. The animal, by being food to another, becomes a type of Christ. Christ's offering of all of creation in His own body transforms creation again into an offering to God. We were meant to be the bridge; Christ, as the truest human, fulfilled that role as "bridge" between God and man.
If death - real death - is separation from God, then our fall KILLED creation (separated it from its purpose) and Christ's recapitulation of creation UNDID that disobedience and RESURRECTS creation from that spiritual death.
If physical death is nothing out of the ordinary, then why is all of Creation delivered from it?
Perhaps the new body will not need to eat. If it does, then it will not be death-as-mere-change-of-state that will end, but death-as-separation-from-God that will (in a sense) die out. Instead, our UNDERSTANDING of animal death will be transformed by our renewed unity with God; but I'm open to plants or animals continuing to consume biological and non-biological matter in a state of constant change that, in popular definition, would correspond to "biological" death.
In Christ,
Macarius