Missionary to the Goths. Missionaries during the time of Emperor Constantine in 312 began to be sent out for political reasons of bringing outlying areas within the scope of Roman control. Ulfilas was one of these, but his motivation was the desire to spread the gospel.

He was born in 311 in present-day Romania and raised in the pagan environment of the Goths, a barbarian tribe outside the Roman empire. He did diplomatic service under Constantinople and came under the influence of Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia; he learned the Scriptures in Greek & Latin and served as a "reader."

At age 30 Ulfilas was consecrated Bishop to the Goths who lived north of the Danube. He worked among the Goths for 40 years successfully, but hampered by persecution. For safety, in 348, he moved his Gothic Christian community across the Danube into safer Roman territory. Some of these people later returned to their people to serve as missionaries.

Ulfilas translated the Bible into the Gothic native tongue, an unwritrten language for which he developed an alphabet. He was successful in rendering an almost word for word translation from the Greek without losing the Gothic idiom and the Goths & Vandals both carried it with them moving from place to place in Europe.

Ulfilas died at the age of 70 while on a mission to Constantinople for the Gothic king. The gospel continued to be preached by the Goths even throughout many military campaigns.

V. Raymond Edman said, "Their doctrine, perhaps, was defective; their hearts were not. They sought service, not security; comradeship in Christ, not a cathedral; discipleship, not domination."

doctrine - Ulfilas professed a mild form of Arianism, as he concluded that, though Christ was sinless and unchangeable and the Savior of mankind, he was essentially different from the Father and was therefore not God. This doctrine was overruled at the Council of Nicaea, but many of the churchmen, such as Ulfilas, mainly in the eastern portion of the empire, continued to hold this view.

http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/ulfilas.php>Ulfilas