Homoian ('Arian') Christianity

For long stretches of the fourth century, the church the emperors backed was not the one that eventually won. The Homoians — from the Greek homoios, "like" — taught that the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures, and refused to go further and call him of one being with the Father, on the grounds that Scripture never used the word and no council should force it on anyone; they did not call themselves Arians, and that label came from opponents who wanted them tied to a man most of them had never followed. Backed by the emperors Constantius II and later Valens, and adopted at the councils of 359 and 360, this was the imperial church's official position long enough for Jerome to write that the world groaned to find itself Arian. Its most lasting work was done outside the empire: Ulfila, consecrated bishop around 341, spent his life among the Goths, made an alphabet for their language, and translated the Bible into it. Through that mission the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Lombards became Christians in this form, and Homoian kingdoms ruled Italy, Spain, and North Africa for generations after the empire itself had turned Nicene — the Visigoths of Spain going over to the Nicene creed at Toledo in 589, with the Lombards of Italy the last to follow, two generations later.