What is your opinion on Proverbs 8:23–31, which is often used by Jehovah’s Witnesses to deny the deity of Jesus?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1986.

The strength of the case argued by the Jehovah's Witnesses rests on an interpretation of this passage which unfortunately has been common in evangelical (and other) circles. This interpretation supposes that 'wisdom' here refers to an actual heavenly being (what the theologians call a hypostasis), and that that being is the second person of the Trinity (or, as the Jehovah's Witnesses would say, 'a god' created by a God).

This interpretation is surely mistaken, as can be seen from Proverbs 8:12: 'I wisdom dwell with prudence'. If 'wisdom' here is an actual being, namely the second person of the Trinity, who is 'prudence'?

The better interpretation of 'wisdom' in Proverbs 8:22–31 is that here, for the sake of vividness, the writer personifies abstract qualities as we do in modern English. For instance, we might say, 'Honesty has always led me to act in such and such a way'.

Of course, we know from the New Testament that, while the divine wisdom was expressed in creation, the creation was in fact brought into being by a personal agent, God of very God, the second person of the Trinity, of whom it is true that 'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him' (Colossians 2:3), and always have been.

Verses like Proverbs 8:24–25 make the important point that the blessed Trinity was not dependent on some external source for wisdom (cf. Isaiah 40:12–14). All wisdom has always proceeded from the triune God as its source.