I've enjoyed rereading the republished essays of Dr Packer on the atonement in the new Packer-Dever volume from Crossway volume, In My Place Condemned He Stood. Must-reads for all those tired of the childish -- and blasphemous -- superficiality of the `atonement is cosmic child abuse' brigade.  I disagree, however, with the claim he makes that the conflict with the Socinians in the seventeenth century pushed the Reformed into an unhelpful emphasis on issues of justice/divine government which served to undermine some of the richness and mystery of the biblical teaching.  On the contrary, I think the clash with the Socinians forced the Reformed to reflect in deeper ways on numerous strands of biblical teaching: the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament (in terms both of the anti-type/type of OT priesthood to NT priesthood); the unity of Christ's priestly action of death and intercession; the federal significance of the Adam-Christ parallel in Romans 5; and the connection between historical economy and divine being, which bore fruit in setting the atonement within a carefully articulated Trinitarian context (which, incidentally, has numerous other aspects which benefit the church's theology, not least the full integration of catholic christology into the Reformed paradigm, and a proper articulation of the unity of Christ's person in the office of mediator).  All of these are theological gains and point to the deepening of atonement theory in the seventeenth century, not to its narrowing and impoverishment.