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.
I know, but our physical bodies back then were different than they are now. they were much more spiritualized, and more like Christ's after the Resurrection like our will be after the general Resurrection.
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.
so then the Gabriel that existed before the Anunciation died and there is a different Gabriel that announced the Birth to the sheepherds, and there is a third that spoke to Zacharias?
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.
I have heard that death is separation, any kind of separation, so the physical death of animals is a part of what disunites man from creation.
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?
that might be your definition of death, but it seems to me that, like I said before, death is separtation: man from woman, man from creation, man from God, angels from God, etc.
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).
God can bring animals back in a glorified state, like they were pre-Fall. no souls, no pure passivity.
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)?
no, animals do not have souls. soulless animals can life forever if God wills them to do so.
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.
no one is denying the physical, just that the physical was more spiritualized and incorrupt back then.
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.
physical change does not mean death. I don't think I have ever heard that as a definition for death.
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.
then why is all of Creation yearning for the Second Coming as St Paul states?
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.
no arguments with us not being animals. but why is it that man's material side is supposed to live on while all other material things die off. why does God place immortal Man over a dying creation?
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.
so our Fall made a temporal glorifying of God from creation even more temporal?
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.
there is no cycle of Life for a creation that, from the get go, is dying off. basically you have man with his eternal purpose of glorifying God, using a corrupt and fallen purposeless creation to do so.
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.
the implication is that God made something without ultimate purpose.
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.
no arguments here.
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.
yeah, if that is death, then that means that Creation was alive in a way before the Fall that was changed after the fall. basically it seems like you are saying that the death of the created world didn't really have an impact aside from the thorns maybe that God cursed the ground with.
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.
the new body won't need to eat because it didn't need to eat in the beginning. those early fruits and nuts that Adam and Eve could eat were as a way of communing with God. it was their obedience that kept them alive, not any biological need for nutrition.
and if I misread anything you wrote please clear it up, so I don't go on confusing folks