“... Augustine identifies this medium of change as “matter” —“The matter of 157 heaven and earth is one thing, the beauty of heaven and earth is another. You made the matter from absolutely nothing, but the beauty of the world from formless matter.” Matter, says Augustine, is a “nothing something” and “a 158 being which is non-being.” In the post-Enlightenment period, it is easy to 159 misread Augustine at this point as denigrating material existence or depicting creation as a struggle to impose form on the concrete world. In Augustine’s 160 context, however, “matter” is simply potentiality, the plasticity that any act of making presupposes. Thus, when Augustine describes matter as “a kind of 161 formlessness without definition” or as “this next-to-nothing [made] out of nothing,” he is not disparaging matter or physical existence. Rather, he is 162 simply attempting to name that which underlies change, the something that is changed. Bringing form to matter “is not the imposition of one thing on an- other, let alone one system on another: it is simply the process of actualisation itself.” Materiality is the presupposition of mutability and is therefore good 163 as the means to the ultimate end of creation. [...] Confessions, 13.33. 158 [...] In roughly the same time period, Wisdom of Solomon 11:17 takes for granted that creation is out of formless matter (ex amorphou hulēs). Thus, 33 while Gamaliel II denies the use of preexisting matter, the author of Wisdom of Solomon describes creation in language reminiscent of Hellenistic views. The most we can confidently conclude, then, is that early Judaism included a diver- sity of views regarding matter. 34 ...”

“... Option 1 is of great historical importance. It reads the text as follows: In the beginning God created the rude, unformed matter of the world. Verse 2 describes this chaotic state. Then from v. 3 onward God creates the formed world, both creating new things (light, firmament, etc.) and using them to separate out and organize the various chaotic elements (water, darkness). This idea seems to underlie Wis 11:17, ‘thy almighty hand, which created the world out of formless matter (NEB), and this text seems to be the key place within the biblical tradition for this approach. These concepts are fully discussed by Augustine (Confessions 12), for whom of course Wisdom of Solomon was fully canonical Scripture, often cited by him as proof of this doctrine.2 This approach provides, among other things, a basic creation out of nothing (v. 1), and an apparent rationale for the chaos of v. 2. Option 1 was very influential in sup­ porting traditional Christian doctrines. ...”