I don't think the changes in 'concepts of what God does/is' over recent centuries can really be seen as 'retreats' without starting from a particular such concept in the first place, in which case as in others many atheists of the current strain seem to have a significantly more specific, and for that matter more 'traditionalist' (although not actually traditional), idea of God in mind than most theologians.
It has been argued, actually, that one of the factors that brought on modernity and the inherent break-up between faith and reason* was a clear
expansion in the idea of God. We started thinking God transcendentally, fully withdrawn from this world somewhere in the 15th or 16th century (re: the rise of nominalism) and thus created a sphere where a autonomous reason could go its own way, independent of auctoritas. ( And then, of course, we wind up with a long discourse about the 'logic of division' as characteristic for modernity, which I'll spare the lot of you for now).
*: Or rather: between theological and scientifical reason, as faith and reason were clearly distinguished from the period of high-scholasticism onwards.
