From Dr. Gary Butner as posted some time ago here on FR. Some of the Greek may not come out in the forward of this, so here is the link (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3109550/posts?page=164#164)
***Important - Godhead. This word appears three times in the New Testament, Acts 17:29; Rom. 1:20; and Col. 2:9. The one word “Godhead” is the translation of two Greek words which have a real distinction between them, a distinction that grounds itself on their different derivations. In Rom. 1:20 we have the word theiotes (θειοτες). In this word, Trench says that “Paul is declaring how much of God may be known from the revelation of Himself which He has made in nature, from those vestiges of Himself which men may everywhere trace in the world around them. Yet it is not the personal God whom any man may learn to know by these aids: He can be known only by the revelation of Himself in His Son; but only His divine attributes, His majesty and glory … and it is not to be doubted that St. Paul uses this vaguer, more abstract, and less personal word, just because he would affirm that men may know God’s power and majesty, His theia dunamis (θεια δυναμις) (divine power) (II Pet. 1:3), from His works; but would not imply that they may know Himself from these, or from anything short of the revelation of His eternal Word. Motives not dissimilar induce him to use to theion (το θειον) rather than ho theos (ὁ θεος) in addressing the Athenians on Mars’ Hill (Acts 17:29).”
In Rom. 1:20, Paul states that the invisible things of God, here, His eternal power and His theiotes (θειοτες), His divinity, namely, the fact that He is a Being having divine attributes, are clearly seen by man through the created universe. Man, reasoning upon the basis of the law of cause and effect, namely, that every effect demands an adequate cause, comes to the conclusion that the universe as an effect demands an adequate cause, and that adequate cause must be a Being having divine attributes. It was as the creator of the universe that fallen man knew God (v. 21). Perhaps the word “God-head” is the best one-word translation of theiotes (θειοτες) in Rom. 1:20. But the term must be explained as above for a proper exegesis of this passage. The same is true of Acts 17:29. When Paul speaks of all men as the offspring of God, he uses the word theos (θεος) for “God,” the word that implies full deity as Paul knows God. But when he speaks of the Greek’s conception of God or of what they as pagans might conceive God to be, he uses theiotes (θειοτες), for the Greeks could, apart from the revelation of God in Christ, only know Him as a Being of divine attributes.
***In Col. 2:9 theotes (θεοτες) is used. Here Trench says, “Paul is declaring that in the Son there dwells all the fulLness of absolute Godhead; they were no mere rays of divine glory which gilded Him, lighting up His Person for a season and with splendor not His own; but He was, and is, absolute and perfect God; and the apostle uses theotes (θεοτες) to express this essential and personal Godhead of the Son.” Here the word “divinity” will not do, only the word “deity.” It is well in these days of apostasy, to speak of the deity of the Lord Jesus, not using the word “divinity” when we are referring to the fact that He is Very God. Modernism believes in His divinity, but in a way different from the scriptural conception of the term. Modernism has the pantheistic conception of the deity permeating all things and every man. Thus divinity, it says, is resident in every human being. It was resident in Christ as in all men. The difference between the divinity of Christ and that of all other men, it says, is one of degree, not of kind. Paul never speaks of the divinity of Christ, only of His deity. Our Lord has divine attributes since He is deity, but that is quite another matter from the Modernistic conception.
Ping to #45.