"creatio ex materia" is latin for creation out of eternally preexistent matter.
Fromt the argument against ex nihilo found in Wikipedia:
Some have argued that this concept, meaning ex nihilo, cannot be deduced from the Hebrew and that the Book of Genesis, chapter 1, speaks of God "making" or "fashioning" the universe. However, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812) disputed these arguments in section II of his book titled "Tanya."
Thomas Jay Oord argues that Christians should abandon the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Oord points to the work of biblical scholars, such as Jon D. Levenson, who argue that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not present in Genesis. Oord speculates that God created our particular universe billions of years ago from primordial chaos. This chaos did not predate God, however, for God would have created the chaotic elements as well. Oord shows that God can create all things without creating from absolute nothingness.
Oord offers nine succinct objections to creatio ex nihilo:
1. Theoretical problem: absolute nothingness cannot be conceived.
2. Biblical problem: Scripture – in Genesis, 2 Peter, and elsewhere – suggests creation from something (water, deep, chaos, etc.), not creation from absolutely nothing.
3. Historical problem: Creatio ex nihilo was first proposed by Gnostics – Basilides and Valentinus – who assumed that creation was inherently evil and that God does not act in history. It was adopted by early Christian theologians to affirm the kind of absolute divine power that many Christians now reject.
4. Empirical problem: We have no evidence that our universe originally came into being from absolutely nothing.
5. Creation at an instant problem: We have no evidence in the history of the universe after the big bang that entities can emerge instantaneously from absolute nothingness. As the earliest philosophers noted, out of nothing comes nothing (ex nihil, nihil fit).
6. Solitary power problem: Creatio ex nihilo assumes that a powerful God once acted alone. But power is a social concept only meaningful in relation to others.
7. Errant revelation problem: The God with the capacity to create something from absolutely nothing would apparently have the power to guarantee an unambiguous and inerrant message of salvation (e.g, inerrant Bible). An unambiguously clear and inerrant divine revelation does not exist.
8. Evil problem: If God once had the power to create from absolutely nothing, God essentially retains that power. But a God of love with this capacity is culpable for failing to prevent genuine evil.
9. Empire Problem: The kind of divine power implied in creatio ex nihilo supports a theology of empire, which is based upon unilateral force and control of others.
A few early Jewish and Christian theologians and philosophers, including Philo, Justin, Athenagoras, Hermogenes, Clement of Alexandria, and, later, Johannes Scotus Eriugena have made statements that seem to indicate that they do not hold to the concept of the creation-out-of-nothing. Philo, for instance, postulated a pre-existent matter alongside God.
Process theologians argue that God has always been related to some “world” or another.
The doctrine may, as the quotation from Maccabees illustrate, have arisen to explain the creative action of a God who is usually referred to in male terms, a patriarchal God even. Males do not gestate living things in the way normally capable of observation, so it had to be explained in a different sense.
Critics also claim that rejecting 'creatio ex nihilo' provides the opportunity to affirm that God has everlastingly created and related with some realm of nondivine actualities or another. According to this alternative God-world theory, no nondivine thing exists without the creative activity of God, and nothing can terminate God’s necessary existence.
Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement dismissed creation ex nihilo, and introduced revelation that specifically countered this concept.[3][4] Some Mormon sects, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, teach that matter is both eternal and infinite and that it can be neither created nor destroyed.[5] Latter-day Saint apologists have commented on Colossians 1:16 that the "Greek text does not teach ex nihilo, but creation out of pre-existing raw materials, since the verb ktidzo 'carried an architectural connotation...as in to build or establish a city....Thus, the verb presupposes the presence of already existing material.'"[6]
While the idea of God everlastingly relating with creatures may seem strange because of its novelty, even its opponents in Christian history – like Thomas Aquinas – admitted it as a logical possibility.
