Peter Emmett, a Christian physician, comprehensively surveyed the arguments for and against withholding or withdrawing food and fluids from PVS patients. He concluded that a satisfactory answer would appear only if humans were seen as made in the image of God. He stated that the image of God is present in all humans who have the capacity to image God, seen as some level of relational and rational abilities. In a subsequent article, he claimed that a patient in PVS "is no longer the image of God because physiological life, permanently devoid of relationality and cognition, is not adequate to be imago Dei."
Robert V. Rakestraw developed this argument further. For him, to be an image of God "presupposes some capacity, either actual or at least potential, for self-awareness and self-direction, for relationships and for the exercise of authority over creation." He concluded, "A body without neocortical functioning cannot image God . . . Neocortical destruction is both a necessary and sufficient condition for declaring an individual dead theologically."
John Jefferson Davis comes to this same conclusion. He has claimed that a patient with no potential for life, relationships or consciousness should be viewed as "biblically dead." He supported his view by noting that the soul can live without a physical body in the Intermediate State (2 Cor 5:1-8). Based on this, he concluded that in PVS it is plausible that the patient's body lives on without his or her soul.
Evangelicals are not alone in developing this type of theological argument. Schotsmans, a Roman Catholic scholar, put it this way: "The PVS patient has lost his personality, become totally dependant, cannot organize his own life. He is no longer a free human being. . . . He is socially dead . . ." The Jesuit ethicist, Kevin Wildes, wrote that with the extent of brain damage in PVS ". . . it seems impossible to argue that a substantial union of body and soul remains or that an obligation to sustain life remains."
http://www.xenos.org/ministries/cros.../donal/pvs.htm