Would salvation have been possible if Jesus had died without shedding His blood?

This is not really a proper answer, but it appears that no one has mentioned this point, and I think it is pivotal… although I am not in a position to say why.

It seems to me that it is part of the salvation concept that Jesus had to be killed by those for whom he was dying.

As for the immediate question… .  I think the expression “shed… blood” is just a way of saying, “died”, informed by the tenet that “the life is in the blood” (Lev 17:11).  However, there is also the point that shedding of blood is associated with being killed by a violent attacker.

I take it that the intent of the question is to make a distinction between Jesus dying in any sense (including quietly dying of old age, drowning, being killed by a wild beast, and what-have-you), and dying in some particular way that qualified (according to whatever criteria) as being on the behalf of anyone else.

As far as that goes, the answer is that Jesus’s death definitely had to qualify as being intended by him as being on the behalf of others.  Ostensibly, being killed by them, particularly for being good and for being God, satisfies the requirements… but again I am not in a position to say why it (apparently) works that way.

No, human as it has been created could not be saved in some much easier way.

Possessing free will and living not so easy life, it is the human that could not be correctly persuaded by demonstrating almighty power alone. If salvation requires some more and different feelings towards the God than just a fear followed by the hatred, it is not that simple to achieve.

This interpretation is from One of us by Joan Osborne. Not a Bible of course but may be relevant. Immanuel Kant in The Critique of Practical Reason also says that compliance just from the fear is worthless and the God wants more from us.

• Man was created in the image of God. (Genesis 1 & 2)

• In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (John 1:4)

• The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

• For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. (Leviticus 17:11)

• Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)

• “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." (John 10:11)

Is another form capable of representing Christ in complete fidelity in bodily form? We were made in God's image and he in ours. Only by both being true was the incarnation possible.

Our bodies are containers for life. Blood is said to be that life. If life was not in blood but in something else, then this would be a different world. Then the alternate "life holder" would be that which must be spilt. It would be different in chemistry and physics, but not different in theology and philosophy. It would be blood by another name.

We give blood at Red Cross blood drives. It may be everything to the person that receives it by transfusion, but for us it is a small sacrifice. We can grow more of it.

If God is is to show love to the fuillest extent, then Jesus as God must lay down his life. He is not a blood donor. He has to give it all. If the life of the world is to get into us dying sinners, his life-container must be breached so that his life may enter us.

In the final analysis, Jesus could have saved some creatures in some other hypothetical universe without spilling his blood, just not humans in this one. To save humans, in whom life is in the blood, he must be made in our image and then spill his blood. His great sacrifice must be commensurate with the greatest sacrifice that we as humans can make (giving our life for others) or else his action is not the greatest act of love possible in our universe.

To the preceding, I add the Father's perfect love for his Son and the Son's perfect understanding of his Father's commands. At Gethsemane, Jesus asked if there was another way:

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

This seems to only answer the question conditionally. Given everything leading up to that moment, going forward there was no other way than the cross. However, Christ is eternal. His words are eternal. The question he asked in time he had already asked in eternity, since nothing was made without his participation. So this temporal question is also an eternal question. Is there another way? If a Father simultaneoulsy possessed of infinite wisdom, power and love knew of another way, He was capable of choosing it and loving enough to do so. The Father did not, so there was no other way.

You can read On the Incarnation, a classic of Christian theology. There St. Athanasius considers the possibility that Christ might have died in some other way. One pertinent reflection is the following:

Some might urge that, even granting the necessity of a public death for subsequent belief in the resurrection, it would surely have been better for Him to have arranged an honorable death for Himself, and so to have avoided the ignominy of the cross. But even this would have given ground for suspicion that His power over death was limited to the particular kind of death which He chose for Himself; and that again would furnish excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. Death came to His body, therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that the Savior might utterly abolish death in whatever form they offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does not himself choose his antagonists, lest it should be thought that of some of them he is afraid. Rather, he lets the spectators choose them, and that all the more if these are hostile, so that he may overthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate his superior strength. Even so was it with Christ. He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death's defeat.

So, although it's an indirect conclusion: at least one extremely prominent theologian in church history has considered your question, and his answer was not simply, “No, that wouldn't have been possible at all.”

Would salvation have been possible if Jesus died without shedding His blood?

The only answer is possibly, but this is what God willed.

Ultimately God could have chosen another way to save mankind, but He willed his Son to die on the Cross.

Both St Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas have written on this very subject.

Michal Hunt gives us the following excellent explications and reasons for it being so necessary that Christ should shed his blood.

Was it God’s Plan that Jesus Christ should Die and Suffer for the Salvation of Man?

Was Christ's suffering and crucifixion really God's plan or could our salvation have been achieved some other way, and why did Jesus have to suffer as brutally as He did to accomplish our salvation? These questions are not new. Sixteen centuries ago St. Augustine addressed the same questions, and he noted that he was not the first theologian to discuss these issues. He wrote: There are those who say "What did God have no other way to free men from the misery of this mortality? No other way than to will that the only begotten Son [...] should become man by putting on a human soul and flesh, becoming mortal so He could endure death?"

St. Augustine reasoned that there were two issues to be considered in the first question: Was there another way?

Issue #1. If the crucifixion of Jesus was the only means God could find to rescue man from sin and eternal death then he would have to be limited in His power and His wisdom.

Issue #2. But, if God preferred the cruel death of His Son over some other plan of salvation then God cannot be kind and merciful and good.

In some ways this is similar to the question posed by so many people down through the centuries concerning God's goodness: "Why if God is a good God is there is suffering in the world He created?" St. Augustine and other doctors of the Church like St. Thomas Aquinas addressed the dilemma by first defining the attributers of God. Sacred Scripture tells us God is full of power, grace, wisdom, covenant love, and compassion. If we believe our God is all-powerful, all wise, and full of mercy and compassion, then we must reject the notion that He was limited in His choice of the means for our salvation. He could have indeed chosen another way other than the cross. God cannot be limited. St. Augustine wrote: Other possible means were not lacking on God's part because all things are equally subject to His power (On the Trinity 8:10). Writing nine centuries later in the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas agreed that of course God could have chosen another way. In his argument he quoted St. Augustine and supported Augustine's statement with a quotation from Sacred Scripture when he wrote: It was possible for God to deliver mankind otherwise than the Passion of the Christ, and then quoting from the Gospel of St. Luke 1:37 he wrote: because nothing shall be impossible for God (Summa Theologiae, 3:46:2).

However, if we believe God is all wise, full of mercy, compassion, and love then we must acknowledge there must have been a good reason He chose the terrifying and bloody Passion of His beloved Son as the means for our redemption. St. Thomas noted that Jesus spoke of this Passion as a plan that must be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, in each of the Synoptic Gospel accounts Jesus warns the Apostles on 3 separate occasions of His passion (1st: Mt 16:21-23; Mk 8:31-33; Lk 9:22; 2nd: Mt 17:22-23; Mk 9:30-32; Lk 9:44-45; 3rd Mt 20:17-19; Mk 10:32-34; Lk 18:31-33) . In Matthew chapter 16 for example, after Simon-Peter gives his confession of faith that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, Jesus begins to prepare His disciples for the terrible coming events of His Passion: From then onwards Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death and to be raised up on the third day. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to rebuke him. "Heaven preserve you, Lord," he said, "this must not happen to you." But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do" (Mt 16:21-23).

As Thomas Aquinas pointed out, there can be no question this and the other passages clearly show this was absolutely God's plan for man's salvation (Summa Theologiae, 3:42:2). Jesus fully understood the sacrificial nature of His death as His Father's plan as passages in John 10:16 and John 12:23-24. These and other passages clearly indicate this same understanding that the Son's self immolation on the altar of the Cross was the means by which man was to be redeemed. And, as St. Thomas also observed, it was after Jesus' Resurrection that He confirmed this was God's plan to His disciples on the Road to Emmaus: Then he said to them, "You foolish men! So slow to believe all that the prophets have said! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer before entering into his glory?" Then starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself(Lk 24:24).

This is an impossible question to answer and not profitable to consider, IMHO. If Jesus could have died without bleeding and still saved us there are so many other aspects of the entire Scripture that would have to be different.

For example, the bloodshed of the Levitical system would be pointless, the Day of Atonement moot, the blood consecrating the covenants would be useless, Abel's blood crying out from the ground would be senseless, Adam and Eve's coats of skins, the Passover and Jesus' repurposing of it...etc. The necessity of blood is woven all throughout the revelation that God has given.

Since Jesus died according to the Scriptures, if there was another way for it to happen the Scriptures would have had to be different. If the Scriptures were different and He died another way (according to them) we could still ask this same pointless question.

To answer this question in the affirmative is to require the concoction of an entirely different revelation. The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth and then God created. Jesus didn't shed His blood as a reaction...it was foundational.