Claim. Marriage exists so that man and woman — the divided forms of God’s dual characteristics — can be rejoined into the harmonized unity God Himself is, returning to “the position of God’s original character.”
Elaboration. §3.3.1 makes the imitation-of-God doctrine the answer to “why marry?” “Why get married? We marry to resemble God. He has dual characteristics and is a unified being in which both characteristics are harmonized. Man and woman were created to resemble each of His dual characteristics. Thus, man and woman should come together in complete unity and harmony, become like the seed, and return to the position of God’s original character” (3.3. Why marriage is important, 138-97, 1986.1.19). The “occupation of two worlds” follows: “Through marriage, man occupies woman’s world, which he was previously ignorant about. Woman also occupies man’s world… By mutually occupying each other’s mysterious worlds, thereby possessing both worlds, man and woman can be united before God” (ibid, 261-218, 1994.6.19). The implication is that singleness cannot fully image God — and that the marriage relation, properly ordered, gives the spouses participation in God’s own structure of unified-yet-divided being.