F. Henry Edwards, at one time a counselor in the First Presidency of the then-RLDS Church, wrote a popular commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants. Commenting on LDS D&C 93:33 (RLDS 93:5), he wrote the following where he reads creation ex nihilo into the text:
“The elements are eternal” (5e). This can hardly mean that the elements coexist with God from eternity to eternity. If this was so, then they are not created and are to that degree independent of God. The sentence is better understood in light of Section 18:2d by which we can understand that the elements are of God, who is eternal. This is consistent with the remainder of the paragraph. (F. Henry Edwards, A New Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants [Independence, Miss.; Herald Publishing House, 1977], 330)
While this is a stretch, as the text clearly speaks of the personal pre-existence of mankind (not Jesus merely):
Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. (D&C 93:29)
Further, this also shows the problem of having a deficient canon. The then-RLDS (now Community of Christ) rejects the Book of Abraham which clearly teaches creation ex materia in chs. 4-5, such as the following:
And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth. (Abraham 4:1)
In the famous King Follett Discourse, the Prophet Joseph Smith further affirmed creation ex materia:
Learned Doctors tell us God created the heavens & earth out of nothing. They account it blasphemy to contradict the idea—They will call you a fool—You ask them why they say don't the Bible say he created the world & they infer that it must be out of nothing. The word create came from the word Barau —don't mean so—it means to organize—same as man would use to build a ship—hence we infer that God had materials to organize from—chaos—chaotic matter.—element had an existence from the time he had. The pure pure principles of element are principles that never can be destroyed—they may be organized and re organized=but not destroyed. (William Clayton Report, The Words of Joseph Smith, p. 359)
Such rejection of an explicit teaching of Joseph Smith's theology and revelations is just the tip of the iceberg of the apostasy of the then-RLDS now CofC, such as its jettisoning of scriptural morality vis-a-vis human sexuality and marriage (to be fair, such took place after the time of Edwards and he would have been shocked by such).
Further Reading
Thomas Jay Oord, ed. Theologies of Creation: Creatio Ex Nihilo and its New Rivals
