Every so often some theistic-evolutionist bright spark will attempt to contradict the Bible and tell us no death before A&E's sin doesn't refer to animal death. This great big exegetical secret lets them off the hook and thus the supposed evidence of ancient death (pre-dating A&E) in the fossil record is not a problem for theistic-evolution. and let us in on the great big exegetical secret that this does not include animal death!
For most Anglicans that I've discussed this with, their thinking seems to be dominated by an excessively, and I think, misplaced forensic understanding of death.
They seem to hold who God is and what happens in his creation as being in two different thought worlds. If they are theistic evolutionists, this makes sense, because their theism is usually a conceptual bolt-on to their core world concept of naturalistic evolution.
Unwittingly, thought, they betray their misunderstanding of death, and fail to see it as a breach in both the fabric of the creation, and in God's relationship with his creation as a totality.
The creation per se is the representation of God's nature extended beyond himself. This has to be consistent with who God is (and that is love, if we are to follow the scriptures); God is also thoroughly alive and in relationship within the god-head.
For God, with such a nature to have the very opposite of relationship, life and love anywhere in the creation, would be to undo the representation of himself. He would demonstrate flaws a mile wide in a creation where basic anti-godness (death) was both the 'last enemy' and 'very good'.
It is simply incoherent to maintain death as some sort of inconvenience in the creation, affecting only animals, as though creation has multiple 'departments'. Some have death, others do not. But death in one department is death in all of the creation
And death is the negation, antithesis and reversal of God: it is maximally 'not-god'. It denies him, undoes creation and terminates relationship: love ceases to operate.
