This point has been made forcefully by a number of evangelical writers in recent years, including Chuck Colson, Os Guinness and David F. Wells. Let me immediately affirm that this is a serious danger. We do indeed run the risk of turning apologetics and evangelism into little more than effective marketing strategies, which fail to honor or recognize the truth and uniqueness of the gospel. But that danger can be avoided. One way of avoiding this danger is to focus on the theological foundation of apologetics, to which I now turn.
Theology is essential to good apologetics, in two manners.
First, it provides the apologist with a network of beliefs and doctrines, which enable him or her to detect weaknesses in alternative worldviews, and to identify the strengths of the Christian proclamation. This is of major importance to the apologetic strategy developed by Francis Schaeffer, who argued that, for theological reasons, every non-Christian worldview would collapse under the pressure of internal contradictions if pressed to its limits. It is essential to be convinced of the truth of the Christian gospel, even in a postmodern culture which seems to regard truth as unimportant. But theology is also important in a second way. It provides the apologist with a way of bringing the full resources of the Christian gospel to bear on the situation in hand.