I think what Paul is describing is blasphemy more than heresy. Blasphemy is a single public statement contrary to official doctrine while heresy is the public endorsement of a school of thought that contradicts official doctrine in some nontrivial way.
Paul's connotation for heresy is: A dismissing B due to a specific statement from B (blasphemy) that contradict A's canon of orthodox beliefs (religion).
But I think that incorrectly conflates individual opinion into an unforgivable sin, punishable only with excommunication or death. Historically, cases of heresy arose when someone like Gallileo proposed a viable model of the universe that contradicted dogma, not when they made a single isolated statement of dissonance. The latter were commonplace in secular writing even early in the Enlightenment. (Blasphemy did alienate freethinkers like Voltaire to the Church and Royalty; but it didn't get him imprisoned or killed. It was direct opposition to Royal dogma that did that, like Sir Thomas More's excommunication by Henry VIII).
BTW, 1918's Sedition Act was passed after the US entered WWI, as an emergency expedient intended to squelch open opposition to the war. It isn't really comparable to the concepts of heresy or blasphemy against a canon of beliefs, since Wilson's decision to go to war wasn't a persistent dogma that needed protection. The Act was a temporary martial law (like Lincoln's suppression of the Maryland government for the duration of the Civil War) to be lifted after the immediate threat to fighting a war had passed.
Paul's connotation for heresy is: A dismissing B due to a specific statement from B (blasphemy) that contradict A's canon of orthodox beliefs (religion).
But I think that incorrectly conflates individual opinion into an unforgivable sin, punishable only with excommunication or death. Historically, cases of heresy arose when someone like Gallileo proposed a viable model of the universe that contradicted dogma, not when they made a single isolated statement of dissonance. The latter were commonplace in secular writing even early in the Enlightenment. (Blasphemy did alienate freethinkers like Voltaire to the Church and Royalty; but it didn't get him imprisoned or killed. It was direct opposition to Royal dogma that did that, like Sir Thomas More's excommunication by Henry VIII).
BTW, 1918's Sedition Act was passed after the US entered WWI, as an emergency expedient intended to squelch open opposition to the war. It isn't really comparable to the concepts of heresy or blasphemy against a canon of beliefs, since Wilson's decision to go to war wasn't a persistent dogma that needed protection. The Act was a temporary martial law (like Lincoln's suppression of the Maryland government for the duration of the Civil War) to be lifted after the immediate threat to fighting a war had passed.