3 theological planks in Genesis 1

NT Wright, while making an admirable contribution to NT theology (thus his name, I guess!) has spoken, albeit briefly on his reasons for his view of an evolved 'creation'.

While the literature is full of sound (IMO) defenses of the nature of the text of Genesis 1-3 as narrative, and its general reasonableness (with the vehemence of the modern world in opposition being more to do with its doctrinaire naturalism than any real substantive objections), theological discussion of the creation is rare. There is a theology that does emerge from Genesis 1 and cannot emerge from a-historical, analogical, metaphorical or fantastic (as in fantasy) views of the text that needs discussion.

It revolves around three major points:

1--God's creating in natural days (expressed in similar form to Numbers 7:12ff) shows him to be acting directly and concretely in space and time, with the only mediator being his Word. He does not distance himself from the creation, nor use the creation itself as some sort of intermediary; which would invite worship of the creation  rather than the creator; he connects himself to it and values it ('very good')

2--God's creating in natural days shows in real concrete terms that he is present and active in the space-time he created for us to be his image-bearers in and be in communion with him, but is not captured within it. This sets the context for the theophanies throughout the Bible, the work of the prophets and the Incarnation. God is not the deist figment, isolated from the cosmos, nor a Neo-platonic left-over disdainful of the material creation. Rather, he rejoices in it!

3--He creates by word: the creation is shown to actually have  real propositional content and reflects this in the rational causality of the work over the 6 days. This shows the creation cognate with our own propositional capability and gives us confidence in our ability to 'rule' over the creation and as we come to know it to express that knowledge propositionally: in 'words' by which we communicate. This also gives us confidence that we can gain real knowledge of the real concrete creation, because it was directly made by the  real concrete (not  abstract, platonic, deist or pan-everythingist) god as were we in his image: like him. Naturalism, as Plantinga argues, cannot provide this type of confidence.

Over all Genesis 1 (and on to 3) sets the frame of reference for our knowledge of ourselves, the creation, our Creator and the inter-connections between then. It cogently grounds theories of knowledge, of being and of ethics and places them in the nature of God who is love, who is communicative within the god-head; and with us, and who only gives truth. It avoids the arid dead end of pagan philosophical speculations that either place god within the cosmos, merge god into it impersonally, or remove him from it deistically or in a mute spiritism. It gives us real confidence in the real world as cognate with our experience of it.