Romans 1:23

and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. [Vaunting their wisdom, these wicked ones made fools of themselves, so that they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man, or even images of baser things, as birds, beasts and reptiles. The audacity of the attempt to reason God out of existence has invariably turned the brain of man (Psalms 53:1), and the excess of self-conceit and vanity developed by such an undertaking has uniformly resulted in pitiable folly. In the case of the ancients it led to idolatry. Reiche contended that idolatry preceded monotheism, and that the better was developed out of the worse; but history sustains Paul in presenting idolatry as a decline from a purer form of worship "For," says Meyer, "heathenism is not the primeval religion from which man might gradually have risen to the true knowledge of the wisdom of God, but is, on the contrary, the result of a falling away from the known original revelation of the true God in his works." Paul does not say that they exchanged the "form" of God for that of an idol, for God is sensuously perceived as glory, or shekinah, rather than as form. Hence, Moses asked to see, not the form, but the glory of God (Exodus 33:18-22). The Greeks and Romans preferred the human form as the model for their idols, but the Egyptians chose the baser, doubtless because, having been longer engaged in the practice of idolatry, their system was more fully developed in degradation. The ibis, the bull, the serpent and the crocodile of the Egyptians give us the complements of Paul's catalogue. Schaff sees in the phrase "likeness of an image" a double meaning, and interprets it thus: "The expression refers both to the grosser and the more refined forms of idolatry; common people saw in the idols the gods themselves; the cultivated heathen regarded them as symbolical representations."]