If one rejects the God of theism, is one then an atheist?

Classical theism presents a concept of "God" that is outside the "Creation" and is all knowing, all powerful, present everywhere, transcending our capacities to be comprehended. Yet this God is fully described by theologians who accept a special revelation as understood by a particular faith tradition.

The explanations for theism raise problems of circularity, and many reject God as a result. Unless we make a serious and honest reckoning with the God of theism, attempts by religious liberals to deal seriously with divine - human encounter is associated with this problematic theism. The following is a passage from Paul's Tillich's The Courage To Be (1952) where he seeks to point toward the God above the God of theism.

"The God above the God of theism is present, although hidden, in every divine-human encounter. Biblical religion as well as Protestant theology are aware of the parodoxical character of this encounter. They are aware that if God encounters man God is neither the object nor the subject and is therefore above the scheme into which theism has forced him. They are aware that personalism with respect to God is balanced by a transpersonal presence of the divine. They are aware that forgiveness can be accepted only if the power of acceptance is effective in man. They are aware of the paradoxical character of every prayer, of speaking to somebody to whom you cannot speak because he is not "somebody," of asking somebody of whom you cannot ask anything because he gives or gives not before you ask, of saying "thou" to somebody who is nearer to the I than the I is to itself. Each of these paradoxes drives the religious consciousness toward a God above the God of theism.

The courage to be which is rooted in the experience of the God above the God of theism unites and transcends the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself. It avoids both the loss of oneself by participation and the loss of one's world by individualization. The acceptance of the God above the God of theism makes us a part of that which not also a part but is the ground of the whole. Therefore our self is not lost in a larger whole, which submerges it in a life of a limited group. If the self participates in the power of being-itself it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swallow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does. This why the Church, which stands for the power of being itself or for the God who transcends the God of religions, claims to be the mediator of the courage to be. A church which is based on the the authority of the God of theism cannot make such a claim. It inescapably develops into a collectivist or semi-collectivist system itself.

Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be.